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How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

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Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#411

Post by mbrodersen »

submeta wrote: post #47

Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. I played around with Scheme some long time ago, read SICP, learned a lot. And I know Lisp inspired many programmers like the founder of Ruby. But I would not think of Lisp when it comes to solving day to day problems. I rather pick Python because it helps me solve all kinds of problems. There are many more solutions I can think of (Ruby, Node, Go, eve…

I agree. I understand and have programmed in Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure. And yes I fully understand macros. I even implemented Lisp style languages just for fun (using C++ and Haskell). But I never wanted to use it for production code.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#412

Post by deterministic »

mbrodersen wrote: post #411
submeta wrote: post #47

Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. I played around with Scheme some long time ago, read SICP, learned a lot. And I know Lisp inspired many programmers like the founder of Ruby. But I would not think of Lisp when it comes to solving day to day problems. I rather pick Python because it helps me solve all kinds of problems. There are many more solutions I can think of (Ruby, Node, Go, eve…

I agree. I understand and have programmed in Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure. And yes I fully understand macros. I even implemented Lisp style languages just for fun (using C++ and Haskell). But I never wanted to use it for production code.

Lisp seems to be optimum for team sizes of one. Maybe two or three if they are very "world view" compatible or have a dominant "alpha" dog. But using it for large scale development?

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#413

Post by mbrodersen »

jstimpfle wrote: post #174
bjoli wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made it click for me is the nature of scheme: a few, very well thought out abstractions, that compose well to build a really neat language. I never really made friends with other languages. Where scheme composes the primitives for problem solving, I find that languages like python or ruby provide either one way for each different thing, or a very large hammer for every problem you might find, be it list comprehe…

> a very large hammer for every problem you might find, be it list comprehensions or generators or whatever OO voodoo you can come up with. List comprehensions, to me, are what makes Python a productive (or the most productive) prototyping language. It allows me to think and program in mathematical relations without much fuss. Add to that nice sets and dicts (needed for asymptotic efficiency), and I can easily forgiv…

Code generation is brilliant. Remember that a compiler is a code generator. Using your own code generator allows you to declare what you want at a high level and then generate bug free code that implements it. It is like having a super fast automatic programmer at your side making you super productive.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#414

Post by mbrodersen »

jstimpfle wrote: post #174
bjoli wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made it click for me is the nature of scheme: a few, very well thought out abstractions, that compose well to build a really neat language. I never really made friends with other languages. Where scheme composes the primitives for problem solving, I find that languages like python or ruby provide either one way for each different thing, or a very large hammer for every problem you might find, be it list comprehe…

> a very large hammer for every problem you might find, be it list comprehensions or generators or whatever OO voodoo you can come up with. List comprehensions, to me, are what makes Python a productive (or the most productive) prototyping language. It allows me to think and program in mathematical relations without much fuss. Add to that nice sets and dicts (needed for asymptotic efficiency), and I can easily forgiv…

Macros/Code Generation used correctly is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. Macros/Code Generation used correctly forces you to figure out at a much higher level what it is you want to achieve. And declare it in a formal computer readable way.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#415

Post by mbrodersen »

wolfgke wrote: post #106
submeta wrote: post #47

Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. I played around with Scheme some long time ago, read SICP, learned a lot. And I know Lisp inspired many programmers like the founder of Ruby. But I would not think of Lisp when it comes to solving day to day problems. I rather pick Python because it helps me solve all kinds of problems. There are many more solutions I can think of (Ruby, Node, Go, eve…

> Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. Paul Graham and Robert Tappan Morris, two of the founders of YCombinator, love Lisp/Scheme. They got rich by selling their company Viaweb to Yahoo. You guessed it: Viaweb was written in LISP and Paul Graham believes that this was their secret weapon: > http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html Also the software that drives Hacker News is written in Arc, a…

So what? 10000+ companies were successful with software not written in Lisp. Biz success is not decided by the programming language you use.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#416

Post by mbrodersen »

flavio81 wrote: post #337
mattmanser wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which promptly got rewritten after pg left. EDIT: From the years being here, and having played with LISP myself, it's a language that appeals to a certain type of programmer, who claim to find it very productive compared to other languages. And everyone else hates it. So you pick a LISP language you're severely limiting your hire pool.

>So you pick a LISP language you're severely limiting your hire pool. I'd rather have 5 very good Lisp programmers than 50 code monkeys.

I'd rather have 5 very good programmers (using ANY language) than 50 code monkeys (using ANY language). The problem with the Lisp programmers is that they very likely would not be able to work as a team.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#417

Post by deterministic »

hbk wrote: post #210
wolfgke wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. Paul Graham and Robert Tappan Morris, two of the founders of YCombinator, love Lisp/Scheme. They got rich by selling their company Viaweb to Yahoo. You guessed it: Viaweb was written in LISP and Paul Graham believes that this was their secret weapon: > http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html Also the software that drives Hacker News is written in Arc, a…

Also Y Combinator is a technique to do recursion on lambda calculus which lisp is built upon.

Haskell (and other functional languages) is also built on the lambda calculus. Lisp isn't special in that regard.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#418

Post by mbrodersen »

mikelevins wrote: post #192
submeta wrote: post #47

Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. I played around with Scheme some long time ago, read SICP, learned a lot. And I know Lisp inspired many programmers like the founder of Ruby. But I would not think of Lisp when it comes to solving day to day problems. I rather pick Python because it helps me solve all kinds of problems. There are many more solutions I can think of (Ruby, Node, Go, eve…

Paul Graham is a Lisper and made his fortune with a Lisp application. Moreover, he wrote a widely-read essay claiming that Lisp was the secret weapon that enabled his startup to outcompete its rivals. In that context, it shouldn't be suprising to find sympathy for Lisp in discussions hosted by Paul Graham's firm. Lisp is quite practical for solving day-to-day problems, as long as you are a knowledgeable Lisper.

And 10000+ other people/companies have made fortunes using programming languages other than Lisp. So what's your point?

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#419

Post by deterministic »

RivieraKid wrote: post #332
submeta wrote: post #47

Honestly curious why Lisp has so much admiration and praise on HN. I played around with Scheme some long time ago, read SICP, learned a lot. And I know Lisp inspired many programmers like the founder of Ruby. But I would not think of Lisp when it comes to solving day to day problems. I rather pick Python because it helps me solve all kinds of problems. There are many more solutions I can think of (Ruby, Node, Go, eve…

I've been programming for 10+ years, tried many different languages and just don't get the appeal of Lisp. Swift for example is simply more productive and fun to use in most use cases. Same with Haskell. I don't believe PG's claim that Lisp made a significant difference in productivity for them.

I also don't believe PG's claim. I know Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure well enough to be able to say that. Also, lots of people/companies made fortunes not using Lisp. So PG's claim proves nothing.

Re: How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)

#420

Post by lispm »

deterministic wrote: post #412
mbrodersen wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I understand and have programmed in Common Lisp, Scheme and Clojure. And yes I fully understand macros. I even implemented Lisp style languages just for fun (using C++ and Haskell). But I never wanted to use it for production code.

Lisp seems to be optimum for team sizes of one. Maybe two or three if they are very "world view" compatible or have a dominant "alpha" dog. But using it for large scale development?

'One' seems to be false.

You can program in teams with ten or in companies with hundred Lisp developers. Usually the team size does not need to be that large.

Lucent for example developed a Lisp based network switch (similar to what Ericsson did later with Erlang) and they had around 100 developers. It was competing with a much larger team developing a similar product in C++.

ITA had around 100 developers for their flight search in Lisp.

Symbolics had at its height around 1000 employees and my guess would be that 40% were Lisp programmers.

Personally I'd say there would be little problem working in a team with ten Lisp developers - you just have to find or educate them.

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