How I lost my faith in Lisp • Hacker News Board

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#41

Post by brlewis » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 3:57 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was de…

I think you summarized his reasons correctly, but I see his reasons as faulty.

(1) assumes that if a technology is good, it will see steady adoption over time. This is not true. See "Why didn't the Romans have hot air ballons" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2264998

About (2) I want to phrase my criticism carefully. To be clear, I'm not saying that Ron is a generally egotistical person, any more than your typical programmer, or than myself. What I am saying is that (2) is an egotistical line of reasoning. It's akin to seeing someone take a better picture with a cheap camera than you take with your expensive one, and losing faith in expensive cameras. Or like listening to someone make a song sound better on an upright piano than you make it sound on a grand piano. The Python programmers who knocked him off his high horse at Google are not proof that Python is better.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#42

Post by brlewis » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:02 PM UTC

dspeyer wrote: post #36

Note python. The beginning of the article was all Lisp demolishing C and Fortran. Then he saw that Python could stand up to it. Most of the flexibility, nicer syntax and better libraries. Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years. Is it any surprise the rest of the world caught up?

I understand that casual conversation doesn't always require one to factcheck every statement, but did you think before you wrote "Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years" whether you really know that? And did you think it would lead to productive discussion?

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#43

Post by brlewis » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

motxilo wrote: post #39

dspeyer wrote: post #36

Note python. The beginning of the article was all Lisp demolishing C and Fortran. Then he saw that Python could stand up to it. Most of the flexibility, nicer syntax and better libraries. Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years. Is it any surprise the rest of the world caught up?

Yeah, a total surprise that the world has taken 25 yrs to catch up.

I laughed at your comment and there's a good point in there, but then I downvoted it because it's counterproductive to this discussion. I'll get a headache if the comments here end up like every other language war on the Internet.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#44

Post by mahmud » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

parfe wrote: post #35

mahmud wrote: post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

Does it have to be a _startup_?

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#45

Post by brlewis » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

parfe wrote: post #35

mahmud wrote: post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

The startup that Akamai bought that helps companies make mobile versions of their websites primarily used Clojure, and continues to do so at Akamai.

My creation, the world's best photo sharing site, primarily uses Kawa Scheme: http://ourdoings.com/

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#46

Post by akkartik » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:16 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #42

dspeyer wrote: post #36

Note python. The beginning of the article was all Lisp demolishing C and Fortran. Then he saw that Python could stand up to it. Most of the flexibility, nicer syntax and better libraries. Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years. Is it any surprise the rest of the world caught up?

I understand that casual conversation doesn't always require one to factcheck every statement, but did you think before you wrote "Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years" whether you really know that? And did you think it would lead to productive discussion?

When I read his comment I automatically converted it in my mind to "Common Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years." 25 years is probably too much, but compared to clojure and racket Common Lisp seems archaic, like reading Shakespeare. If it has had updates they've been on the edges, making the standards bulkier and more arcane, harder to parse.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#47

Post by pchristensen » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:17 PM UTC

parfe wrote: post #35

mahmud wrote: post #29

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN. In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

I made a list a while ago but it's a couple years out of date. It's probably a big underestimate because I last updated it before Clojure started to boom. I'll add anything people mention in this thread and if anyone knows more, email peter @ pchristensen . com

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#48

Post by motxilo » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:24 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #43

motxilo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a total surprise that the world has taken 25 yrs to catch up.

I laughed at your comment and there's a good point in there, but then I downvoted it because it's counterproductive to this discussion. I'll get a headache if the comments here end up like every other language war on the Internet.

Maybe not that obvious, but my facetious comment was along the lines of other languages needing such a long time to catch up with Lisp. And the gist of it being that those all-the-rage features they are including are already present in Lisp. It something that leaves me thinking away, but hey, don't get too serious. I promise to be more direct next time!

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#49

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

Markku wrote: post #23

Silhouette wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I half-agree with you. I don't think a great library can ever elevate an OK language to great. However, a poor library can certainly drag an OK language down to poor. One of the most complicated decisions in developing any new programming language today must surely be where to draw the line separating standard library facilities from those to be provided externally. Provide too little, and you get a zillion i…

Yes, Java is not elevated to great language status by the wealth of libraries. It gets the job done and it is possible to be productive with it, but many times you have to fight it. The language drags the libraries down in this case. In most other modern languages, I would say the libraries are what matters. Racket has a decent repository (PLaneT) for libraries and easy ways to wrap C libraries.

Exactly. Looking from the other side, I suspect Java's much more comprehensive library caused more programmers to favour it over C++ than Java's garbage collection ever did.

I think the almost symbiotic relationship between C# and the .Net libraries today is an interesting case. It seems clear that several of the language features added to C# (or the underlying .Net execution model, if you prefer) in recent years were motivated by particular ways of working with the libraries. Usually, we see mostly one-way traffic, with standard libraries trying to paper over any cracks in the underlying language.

Re: How I lost my faith in Lisp

#50

Post by didip » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #14

civil wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith. "Erann Gat" and "Ron Garret" are the same person; you find him on c.l.l. regularly since 2004.

He's also occasionally on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper

Is he that Ron, the xoogler, who was forced to use Java on AdWords?

Edit: Yup.

http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html

    So I was a little disappointed when I found out
    on day 1 that I had been assigned to the ads group.
    But that disappointment turned to dismay when I learned
    what my assignment was to be: I was the lead engineer
    on a new advertising system code named "adstoo", what
    eventually became AdWords. That part wasn't so bad.
    The bad part was, this was going to be the inaugural
    Java project at Google. Google, which had until now
    been a Java-free zone (which was one of the reasons I
    took the job) was going for Java in a big way, and I,
    the consummate Java hater, was supposed to be its
    chief evangelist.

    Just peachy.