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The programmers who live in Flatland

blog.redplanetlabs.com

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Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#141

Post by nathan_compton »

antonvs wrote: post #106
wild_egg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the macro systems in those languages are really equivalent to lisp macros. If you really want static typing, Lisp macros are powerful enough to implement a full ML type system in userspace as a library. See https://coalton-lang.github.io

> None of the macro systems in those languages are really equivalent to lisp macros. Sure, but we’d hardly expect equivalence in such different languages. I’ve written macros in all the languages I’ve mentioned, as well as Scheme’s syntax-rules and syntax-case, and in practice I don’t see some big advantage of any of them. What actual useful macros do you write in Lisp, that would also be useful in one of those other…

In recent years the only macro I really find myself writing (if it isn't supported in the base language) is pattern matching. If a language has that then I feel there isn't much else use for macros.

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#142

Post by tra3 »

didibus wrote: post #66
tra3 wrote: post #28

I've been using emacs and have written a a few thousand lines of elisp. I like elisp. I generally like any language that I become proficient in. But lisp isn't some sort of magical hammer that turns everyone into 10x programmers. Maybe I still haven't had my epiphany, but I'm not a huge fan of macros in lisps and DSLs (like what ruby is known for). It makes code harder to understand. > Everyone knows that debugging i…

I don't think you should use eLisp as your point of reference. It's the worst Lisp by far. Lisps are a continuum, and I still think there's room for new ones that are even better.

Can you tell me more about this, or point me in the right direction?

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#143

Post by geocar »

hashmap wrote: post #111
geocar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you care about? There are quite a few programmers who say lisp led to early retirement. That was a pretty interesting idea to me. I like going to the beach a lot. I am not so sure about people who don’t want to get done: if you like doing what the ticket says instead of the other way around lisp probably isn’t going to be something you’re interested in.

"Lisp makes people rich, and I love being rich. Using Lisp actually can't help but make you rich. But I can't actually provide any examples of that happening or how they might translate to anyone else. Get so rich with Lisp. Lisp." Show me!

I think you probably misunderstood me.

You can use a better tool than someone who is using a worse tool, and take their customers, because it will be easier to solve the problems better and faster than that someone-else. Lisp is a great tool, but it doesn't help you if you're the tool: You still need someone with a problem who can pay for a solution, and they need to like you enough to pay you for that solution. If you need to hire 30 people to figure that out, Lisp isn't going to help with that problem.

And it's not fast: Lisp is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it's a tool that you can learn how to use to make other tools, it's a tool that is difficult enough to use that you will need perhaps years of experiences in order to use effectively, it's a tool so advanced it might seem like actual wizarding magic just watching someone screencast if you don't know what you're looking at, but it's still just a tool.

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#144

Post by hashmap »

geocar wrote: post #143
hashmap wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lisp makes people rich, and I love being rich. Using Lisp actually can't help but make you rich. But I can't actually provide any examples of that happening or how they might translate to anyone else. Get so rich with Lisp. Lisp." Show me!

I think you probably misunderstood me. You can use a better tool than someone who is using a worse tool, and take their customers, because it will be easier to solve the problems better and faster than that someone-else. Lisp is a great tool, but it doesn't help you if you're the tool: You still need someone with a problem who can pay for a solution, and they need to like you enough to pay you for that solution. If y…

I am literally asking you to show me what you are talking about.

Who retired early? What did they make with Lisp? Do you have a link to that thing they made? Was it actually something special about Lisp or did they just happen to use Lisp while making something that could have just been as easily - or more easily - done with something else? Is that real-world, specific, material outcome replicable by other people and they should know about it?

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#145

Post by geocar »

hashmap wrote: post #144
geocar wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you probably misunderstood me. You can use a better tool than someone who is using a worse tool, and take their customers, because it will be easier to solve the problems better and faster than that someone-else. Lisp is a great tool, but it doesn't help you if you're the tool: You still need someone with a problem who can pay for a solution, and they need to like you enough to pay you for that solution. If y…

I am literally asking you to show me what you are talking about. Who retired early? What did they make with Lisp? Do you have a link to that thing they made? Was it actually something special about Lisp or did they just happen to use Lisp while making something that could have just been as easily - or more easily - done with something else? Is that real-world, specific, material outcome replicable by other people and…

> I am literally asking you to show me what you are talking about.

Do you see these things -> ? Now go look back at your last comment and tell me how many of them you see.

> Was it actually something special about Lisp or did they just happen to use Lisp while making something that could have just been as easily - or more easily - done with something else?

I don't know. Why are you asking me this?

Please read my comments carefully, because I put time into trying to tell you something, but I am not trying to tell you what I think you think I am trying to tell you, and I am not going to justify my opinions to you any more than I would ask you to justify yours.

> and they should know about it?

I have mixed feelings about this: Who are the other people you are talking about?

There are a lot of people I won't work with; I won't trade with them; sell them my products; buy theirs; No contact if I can help it. That's why the first question I asked you is what is important to you? Did you even see my question?

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#146

Post by IAmBroom »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #62
xigoi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What business concepts or thoughts can you express in Clojure that you can’t express in Python or Rust? If you only think about programming languages as a way to make money, the analogy of being stuck in Flatland is perfect.

That's a bit of an ad feminam attack, isn't it? Just because I used the phrase "business concepts", somehow money is the only thing I care about when it comes to language choice? And yet, in my top-level post I said I went and learned lisp and clojure and read SCIP, and I will add that I did both of those things for fun . So no, I don't only think of programming languages as a way to make money. Elegance and expressi…

How on Earth did you turn that into a sexist attack? Unless you two actually know each other IRL, and the GP shows sexism to you...

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#147

Post by pklausler »

ModernMech wrote: post #139
zbentley wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but … because the overwhelming majority of programming is done in support of businesses selling things? I’m not just talking about people who program for a living. The majority of academic CS chooses its research directions because of what limits people are running into for business; even privacy-focused software has been commoditized by many business; a large amount of OSS development is by (and often paid f…

Yes and no. Most of the big new languages today are created to support the business of selling things because languages are expensive to make, they don't generate any profit themselves, so the only people who have enough money to fund their development are mega corporations, who act in self-interested ways. But look at historical languages and why they were created: Algol - to explore writing algorithms Fortran - to…

Fortran compilers were historically implemented by hardware vendors in order to sell their hardware, and this still largely holds true across the surviving implementations with the exceptions of GNU Fortran (obviously) and nagfor (commercial s/w product). There's a good reason that Cray Research's software group was initially part of its marketing department.

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#148

Post by wrs »

hu3 wrote: post #102
wrs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how people are reading this to say the opposite of what it says. The end of the essay literally tells the reader they can appreciate Lisp if they just take the time to understand it, and they should make the effort. Not “if you don’t already know this, you must be stupid.” If someone writes code based on an algorithm out of a 1985 textbook, and I tell them that they could make it go 20X faster if they le…

> Once I made somebody’s SQL query 100X faster by explaining what an index was. Fortunately they didn’t think I was attacking their intelligence. Next time try calling them a "2D programmer who lives in flatland" for not knowing about indexes and tell me how it goes.

I honestly don’t understand how that’s offensive. It’s just a metaphor, and a pretty good one. Why are you taking it as some kind of value judgement? Do you feel like people who don’t know something are lesser beings?

The book was originally written as a metaphor for understanding a fourth spatial dimension, and as far as I know the metaphor is generally taken as helpful, not demeaning. The flatlanders are never described in an unflattering way.

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#149

Post by libraryofbabel »

IAmBroom wrote: post #146
libraryofbabel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of an ad feminam attack, isn't it? Just because I used the phrase "business concepts", somehow money is the only thing I care about when it comes to language choice? And yet, in my top-level post I said I went and learned lisp and clojure and read SCIP, and I will add that I did both of those things for fun . So no, I don't only think of programming languages as a way to make money. Elegance and expressi…

How on Earth did you turn that into a sexist attack? Unless you two actually know each other IRL, and the GP shows sexism to you...

Oh, I didn’t say GP was making a sexist attack. If I thought that I would have said it clearly and distinctly. Ad feminam is just the feminine version of ad hominem. I like Latin.

Re: The programmers who live in Flatland

#150

Post by ModernMech »

pklausler wrote: post #147
ModernMech wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Most of the big new languages today are created to support the business of selling things because languages are expensive to make, they don't generate any profit themselves, so the only people who have enough money to fund their development are mega corporations, who act in self-interested ways. But look at historical languages and why they were created: Algol - to explore writing algorithms Fortran - to…

Fortran compilers were historically implemented by hardware vendors in order to sell their hardware, and this still largely holds true across the surviving implementations with the exceptions of GNU Fortran (obviously) and nagfor (commercial s/w product). There's a good reason that Cray Research's software group was initially part of its marketing department.

The compilers were, but Fortran wasn't invented so that hardware manufacturers could sell their wares to scientists.
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