Ansible is a Lisp?

#1

Post by soopurman » Sun, May 05, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#3

Post by anthk » Sun, May 05, 2024, 6:54 PM UTC

axblount wrote: post #2

Not everything that can be represented with s-expressions is a lisp. For example: (html (body (h1 "Hello, World!"))) This does not mean that HTML is a lisp.

Well:

This webserver in Maclisp http://up.dfupdate.se/httpd%20html

gave birth to this: http://up.dfupdate.se/ulml.html

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#4

Post by Attummm » Sun, May 05, 2024, 6:57 PM UTC

This is quite a stretch to call Ansible, which consists of YAML files with syntactic sugar and some light Python evaluation, 'Lisp'.

I thought reading the article would make less inflammatory but it didn't.

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#5

Post by anthk » Sun, May 05, 2024, 6:57 PM UTC

axblount wrote: post #2

Not everything that can be represented with s-expressions is a lisp. For example: (html (body (h1 "Hello, World!"))) This does not mean that HTML is a lisp.

Also, more than Lisp, clips would be a really good choice there. Defining constraints to configure a system? That's basically what literally Clips does.

https://www.clipsrules.net/

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#6

Post by cess11 » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

axblount wrote: post #2

Not everything that can be represented with s-expressions is a lisp. For example: (html (body (h1 "Hello, World!"))) This does not mean that HTML is a lisp.

OK, but what about the homoiconicity and syntax macros?

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#7

Post by behnamoh » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

Either the author doesn't know what Lisp means (the "essence" of Lisp), or just wants to stretch YAML to mean Lisp.

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#8

Post by jeffrallen » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:19 PM UTC

"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#9

Post by anonzzzies » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:32 PM UTC

jeffrallen wrote: post #8

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

Yes, that’s what I think off when I see ansible, not that it actually is a lisp. It’s a poor hack for something you can trivially do with lisp since forever. Like most of these things and indeed Greenspuns rule says we will find that; you need the solution for something complicated so you start building something simple, add more features and end up with something you should’ve done in lisp from the start. And of course now you miss most (all) of the benefits.

Re: Ansible is a Lisp?

#10

Post by axblount » Sun, May 05, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

cess11 wrote: post #6

axblount wrote: post #2

Not everything that can be represented with s-expressions is a lisp. For example: (html (body (h1 "Hello, World!"))) This does not mean that HTML is a lisp.

OK, but what about the homoiconicity and syntax macros?

I don't know Ansible well enough to say for sure, but the macro example seems like more of a C preprocessor style "macro." I don't see how it's doing anything more than filling in a template.