Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp • Hacker News Board

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#61

Post by cema » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 5:49 PM UTC

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #41

pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and this, I think, has so far been the largest contribution of lisp. Not too bad!

And if Clojure becomes a widely used language, so much better. :-) That's still a big "if", of course.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#62

Post by cema » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 5:55 PM UTC

Shprrrrt wrote: post #32

pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Clojure crossed Common Lisp on Google Trends in october 2008, then remained stable until 1.0. From then, it kept on growing, at a slow but steady pace. I guess we'll see another boom when the major libraries will have stabilized as well... http://www.google.com/trends?q=clojure,common+lisp

The trend for Clojure is encouraging, however when comparing it with the trend for Common Lisp, one has to keep in mind that the latter is often called simply Lisp. A slight decline in the trend for Common Lisp may be related to an increase in such usage (if there is one, which I am not sure about).

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#63

Post by cema » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 6:04 PM UTC

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…

I think you presented the list very well.

Several points have been touched on already, I will mention one: DSL. I agree that the perception of it as a barrier to entry in a project may exist. I think it is as incorrect as tying Lisp to AI, albeit for a very different reason. Indeed, a new member of a team has to learn DSL if one is used in the project. However, new members always have to learn the conventions and patterns used in the project they are joining. DSL makes some of them explicit and more understandable.

Re: Doug McIlroy: McCarthy Presents Lisp

#64

Post by silentbicycle » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 7:03 PM UTC

mononcqc wrote: post #60

silentbicycle wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Check out Lisp Flavored Erlang for a lisp developed on the Erlang VM. http://github.com/rvirding/lfe

Thanks! (erlog in his other projects looks good too.)