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Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

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Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#41

Post by RyanMcGreal »

pg wrote: post #15
Keyframe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touche and haw haw, but you very well know what I've meant.

No, actually, I'm not sure which of two usual misconceptions you have: (a) that Lisp = Common Lisp, or (b) that Lisp is rarely used. Usually when people think Lisp is dead, they mean (b), but you've been here long enough to have noticed the volume of stories about Clojure on HN, so the probability of (a) and (b) seem about equal.

Not to mention the fact that even non-lisps are getting progressively more lispy over time.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#42

Post by greml1n »

aerique wrote: post #38
PieSquared wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing really 'dead' about Lisp, whether you're speaking about Common Lisp or all Lisps. But it is true that most programmers would not turn to it when considering new projects. I essentially see two problems with the state of Lisps. First off, the one with major library support, Common Lisp, is often times lacking in good library support. You'll find 10 libraries to do anything, but 5 of them will be undoc…

So how's CL different for getting support than Python?

When I google for a bug/question in Python, I invariably find remarks about the same Python I am using (CPython, the effective standard and single implementation that works on all platforms equally well which all users have rallied around).

When I google about the same for whichever of the multitude of Common Lisp implementations exist out there, I have to filter down to which one as well as which platform.

That is a tremendous difference, especially for newcomers.

As for "actual" support, given the focus on a single implementation (which I understand and like that it is not possible with CL), when you need to hire some random consultant service, you don't have to do the same thing when filtering prospective people.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#43

Post by TY »

shiro wrote: post #24
Keyframe wrote: post #2

I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - argument was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, w…

> My primary focus in life has been computer graphics, and my first language was C. I was born in 1980 Ah, you've come a bit too late. Late 80s through early 90s Lisp machines were popular in the CG industry; modeling, animating and even rendering software were written in pure Lisp. After Lisp machines were taken over by unix workstations, those tools were ported on Common Lisp and as far as I know they kept some sha…

Mirai used to be one of the high-end 3D animation and modeling tools. If my memory does not deceive me, it was written in a Lisp dialect.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_%28software%29) tells me that it

  "traces its lineage to the S-Geometry software from Symbolics"
Unfortunately, it seems that it has slipped into oblivion since 2004. The last high profile project it was used in was one of the Lord of The Rings films...

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#44

Post by Keyframe »

pg wrote: post #15
Keyframe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touche and haw haw, but you very well know what I've meant.

No, actually, I'm not sure which of two usual misconceptions you have: (a) that Lisp = Common Lisp, or (b) that Lisp is rarely used. Usually when people think Lisp is dead, they mean (b), but you've been here long enough to have noticed the volume of stories about Clojure on HN, so the probability of (a) and (b) seem about equal.

As for a) I was referring to Lisp as a family of computer languages - not Common Lisp or Scheme per se, so that might have come out unclear. Maybe because my native language is not English.

However as for b) - Of course I have seen a trend on HN about Lisp, so what's better place to look for answers than here? It's a safe haven, and that's it. Even if all people on HN wrote nothing but code in one of the Lisp dialects, would that be statistically significant at all? Try to find questions in general for lisp, scheme, cl and variations on stackoverflow for example.

I know you have wrote a successful software where you raved about Lisp - and it's cool and all, but that was back then. I also see people talking about Clojure in volumes, but I haven't seen any real world usage of significance statistical merit.

However, when watching presentation at google from Dan Weinreb - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8 or when looking at presentation from naughty dog (for their new engine): http://www.gameenginebook.com/coursemat.html you really have to think about it and say to yourself: 'Hell, why this isn't used more?'. That is all.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#45

Post by chollida1 »

mahmud wrote: post #17
Keyframe wrote: post #2

I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - argument was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, w…

Can anyone, preferably a pro Lisp or Scheme developer give a rationale why it isn't used more often? You will need to bite bullets, take responsibilities and own projects and budgets if you want to use lisp at "work". I am doing my current project in Common Lisp, all the way down. It wasn't always like that; I started as project manager for a tiny but growing PHP codebase. The application domain is both too broad, an…

> I am doing my current project in Common Lisp, all the way down.

Right on. What Common Lisp Operating System did you find suitable for what you are doing?

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#46

Post by Keyframe »

shiro wrote: post #24
Keyframe wrote: post #2

I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - argument was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, w…

> My primary focus in life has been computer graphics, and my first language was C. I was born in 1980 Ah, you've come a bit too late. Late 80s through early 90s Lisp machines were popular in the CG industry; modeling, animating and even rendering software were written in pure Lisp. After Lisp machines were taken over by unix workstations, those tools were ported on Common Lisp and as far as I know they kept some sha…

The thing is, as TY pointed out Nichimen - I've read that essay awhile ago from pg how Lisp gave them competitive advantage... and if you look at Nichimen (spinoff from Symbolics) their path was almost the same. There were SubD's before in our industry (Catmull Clark, Ligthwave MetaNURBS that fori made), but when Nichimen made SubD's into Mirai (and later Nendo) it caused a revolution in 3D, especially modeling. Prior to that we were churning out NURBS for detailed characters and objects, some ventured into poly-by-poly modeling, and when Mirai came along (even if not alot of people used it) it was suddenly a box-modeling revolution. There were stars aligned for them though, they had a system built on top of Franz Allegro, Bay Raitt was there to give them input (the guy that modeled Gollum - look at the workflow that changed minds of modelers back then: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubgvomRTW80 ) and there was a stale air around other software packages.

This was still the era when PA/Maya was coming out, SI|XSI was on the horizon and packages cost were $15K+. Bad management ruined Nichimen.

There is a common motif amongst Nichimen, Naughty Dog, even Viaweb - they all had a system that let them react to and develop new stuff at levels and speed no one could've competed against. And if you look at the talk from Dan Weinreb, he is basically saying the same thing about them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#47

Post by Keyframe »

TY wrote: post #43
shiro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My primary focus in life has been computer graphics, and my first language was C. I was born in 1980 Ah, you've come a bit too late. Late 80s through early 90s Lisp machines were popular in the CG industry; modeling, animating and even rendering software were written in pure Lisp. After Lisp machines were taken over by unix workstations, those tools were ported on Common Lisp and as far as I know they kept some sha…

Mirai used to be one of the high-end 3D animation and modeling tools. If my memory does not deceive me, it was written in a Lisp dialect. Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_%28software%29 ) tells me that it "traces its lineage to the S-Geometry software from Symbolics" Unfortunately, it seems that it has slipped into oblivion since 2004. The last high profile project it was used in was one of the Lord of…

Yeah, nichimen was a spinoff from symbolics, later turned into IZware and doomed by management. However Mirai and Nendo were softwares that revolutionized 3D workflow when it came out. It brought into the mainstream what we call now box-modeling. Bay Raitt (Gollum modeler, he is at Valve now I think) had a lot to do with it, and it was not the first software to offer such a workflow, but it was the most prominent one.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#48

Post by mahmud »

chollida1 wrote: post #45
mahmud wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone, preferably a pro Lisp or Scheme developer give a rationale why it isn't used more often? You will need to bite bullets, take responsibilities and own projects and budgets if you want to use lisp at "work". I am doing my current project in Common Lisp, all the way down. It wasn't always like that; I started as project manager for a tiny but growing PHP codebase. The application domain is both too broad, an…

> I am doing my current project in Common Lisp, all the way down. Right on. What Common Lisp Operating System did you find suitable for what you are doing?

That's a question you should ask every non-C programmer. But yeah, I run Movitz.

http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/

Chew it.

[Edit: this, of course, is a wise-ass reply to something I considered a wise-ass question. I develop on Win32 and deploy on Linux]

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#49

Post by Keyframe »

derefr wrote: post #25
Keyframe wrote: post #2

I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - argument was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, w…

I'm not a pro Lisper, but I think reasons offered for this include: * The AI winter (with Lisp, at the time, being seen as "the AI language") * The heavy-cost and closed nature of the toolchain, and lack of standardization between toolchains, when industry was searching for a language to rally behind several decades ago * The continued lack of standardization on all the "included batteries" when the open source movem…

Strong arguments there, I cannot even question them. Probably the two that stand out are DSLs and impression of Lisp as slow, academic in nature.

I'll go read up on AI winter again, shame I wasn't around to witness that era. On a related note, I just got an email a few days ago for "Third Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI-10 (in Lugano, Switzerland, March 5-8 2010)".

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#50

Post by silentbicycle »

derefr wrote: post #25
Keyframe wrote: post #2

I always wondered why Lisp is dead in the water. I got replies from people that never professorially coded anything in Lisp or Scheme (yeah..) - argument was along the lines that in the past hardware was always dictating lower level languages and leagues of people were taught the ways of the everyday code that was only a few (if any) levels above the hardware. Thus, all of the primitives of the age (ASM, C, Pascal, w…

I'm not a pro Lisper, but I think reasons offered for this include: * The AI winter (with Lisp, at the time, being seen as "the AI language") * The heavy-cost and closed nature of the toolchain, and lack of standardization between toolchains, when industry was searching for a language to rally behind several decades ago * The continued lack of standardization on all the "included batteries" when the open source movem…

Your point about "embrac[ing] the Unix philosophy" is a good one. Probably not the biggest factor for mainstream adoption, but significant nonetheless. While there are some Lisps now that that do this well (particularly those that compile to C, such as Chicken Scheme), it has a big historical precedent.

I've been wondering how Lisp would look if it were redesigned from the ground up to include Unix's philosophy, and I'm beginning to think that Erlang would be a good candidate. (With a healthy dose of Prolog as well.)

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