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Not Lisp again (2009)

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Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#271

Post by Roboprog »

Roboprog wrote: post #269
krapp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, that's a sign that maybe a language has too little syntax. I can read C++, Javascript and PHP just as well in plain text because the other non-paren elements provide necessary contextual cues, along with nesting. Syntax coloring is helpful, but it shouldn't be necessary. I can at least understand nesting closing parens on their own lines, the way Roboprog did above, but throwing all of them on a single line ju…

Thanks. Almost nobody liked my comment (downvoted), but it sure kicked off a long discussion :-) I haven't done any actual Lisp since the 80s on a CDC Cyber mainframe and a dedicated expansion card on an Apple II, so I'm "a wee bit" out of date. I'm very visual / "geometric", so I like to see the "shape" of things. I can't stand looking at stuff "formatted" (?) in the typical enterprise java (8) "staircase of doom" w…

Seriously, if you would have showed me the text of the code I'm working on now when I was a year into college in the early 80s, I think I would have changed my major.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#272

Post by kazinator »

grey-area wrote: post #226
oxryly1 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Lisp (in the form of Racket) for many years in a production environment, I've observed: 1. People do complain about the parentheses but they generally get to work dealing with them right away. It's the loudest complaint, but it doesn't really even slow people down. 2. This is a similar complaint, and does scare people off from jumping in if they have a real choice. 3. Racket in particular solves this one to an…

The hesitation I'd have with Lisp(s) as an outsider, which ties in to number 3, is that the language itself is compact, elegant and extensible. It's the opposite problem to C++ (the language is too large) - the language is too small and it encourages you to build other languages inside it. So it'd be very hard to share code with others because as soon as you start building abstractions your language and worldview div…

"Lisp is small" without being specific about the dialect is meaningless.

ANSI Common Lisp's one and only 1994 standard is over 1000 pages long. The Scheme reports are a lot smaller, though growing. I think still under 100 pages.

I developed a Lisp dialect that has a dense reference manual that is over 530 pages long with no table of contents or index.

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#273

Post by fao_ »

lispm wrote: post #254
dTal wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To any lisp enthusiasts who wonder why the language family isn't more popular: this is 99% of why. You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w". Any attempt to use any other tool will be met with incredulous responses to "just use Emacs". It's such a shame because the development environment for Lisp could be so much better than other languages. It could be mindblowingly…

> You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w" You are misinformed. I'm using a GNU Emacs (-> Aquamacs) on the Mac and cut/paste/copy are invoked with the usual command keys. But usually I use the LispWorks editor, which is also in the Emacs family, and even there cut/copy/paste is the usual command sequence... Both editors are built with excellent Lisp support. One is wr…

> You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part?

"You haven't used a PDP-10, how would you be able to deal with a smartphone?"

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#274

Post by lispm »

fao_ wrote: post #273
lispm wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w" You are misinformed. I'm using a GNU Emacs (-> Aquamacs) on the Mac and cut/paste/copy are invoked with the usual command keys. But usually I use the LispWorks editor, which is also in the Emacs family, and even there cut/copy/paste is the usual command sequence... Both editors are built with excellent Lisp support. One is wr…

> You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part? "You haven't used a PDP-10, how would you be able to deal with a smartphone?"

He didn't talk about old technology like 'smartphones', which existed as products (Nokia Communicator, ...) 20 years ago, but claimed that much better 'futuristic' IDEs for Lisp are possible, though what he claims may currently only exist in his imagination...

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#275

Post by lispm »

kazinator wrote: post #259
dTal wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To any lisp enthusiasts who wonder why the language family isn't more popular: this is 99% of why. You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w". Any attempt to use any other tool will be met with incredulous responses to "just use Emacs". It's such a shame because the development environment for Lisp could be so much better than other languages. It could be mindblowingly…

I've been programming in Lisp for 17 years now. I've always done it in Vim.

my sincerest condolences

Re: Not Lisp again (2009)

#276

Post by cutler »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #182
cutler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Hy (hylang.org) which is kinda Clojure-in-Python giving you access to the Python library ecosystem.

The only difference of using Hy instead of Python are the macros though. What can you do easily with macros that is cumbersome to do with regular Python?

Macros aside, Hy removes the single statement limitations of Python lambdas and the reliance on indentation. The fact that it's a Lisp also introduces a higher level of composability.
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