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I understand this project, along with most of the other "Lisp compiling to ..." projects are just for fun, but it's still annoying to see so many of them announ

I understand this project, along with most of the other "Lisp compiling to ..." projects are just for fun, but it's still annoying to see so many of them announced. Half the time it's a stretch to even call them "a Lisp." It's a little silly to call your language a Lisp if it's missing a lot of the stuff that Lisp is associated with. Does this Lisp even support macros? Just say it's a new language that uses s-expressions and compiles to Go or whatever. Calling it a Lisp makes it look like a lame attempt to get more attention. I'm mostly just annoyed because everyone releases all these incompatible Lisp wannabes, when Common Lisp, Scheme, and even Clojure, are all perfectly good languages. Common Lisp has a few really good compilers (sbcl, lispworks, etc.) that produce code that's competitive with C in some situations. QuickLisp has really modernized the CL library ecosystem, and while there aren't as many libraries available as there are for Python, Ruby, and Java, the situation has drastically improved recently, and is continuing to improve.

owickstrom 11y ago
I realize that it is missing some of the defining features of a real Lisp, that's why I wrote "Lispy" in the HN title. However, there's surely some parts in the documentation that says it's a Lisp, and that might be a stretch right now. Anyhow, I wanted to get some feedback on this project and perhaps involve people early on, so not having macros yet is nothing that I'm ashamed of. I hope to implement them soon. And yes, there are a lot of good compilers out there. Kashmir is not a replacement for any of them or any of the established Lisps. :)
throwaway533634 11y ago
Here here! It seems like every week someone posts their pet flavor of lisp. This doesn't have an substance. How about coming up with something new!
- kristianp 11y ago
  I hope I don't get downvoted for this, but the correct way to say this is "hear hear". It's derived from "hear him" or "hear her". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear
bjwbell 11y ago
"Lisp" is easier on readers. If he said "s-expression language", I wouldn't immediately have a feel for the level of abstraction he was aiming for (webasm has an s-expression representation but is low level). I agree with the rest of your comment.

owickstrom 11y ago

I realize that it is missing some of the defining features of a real Lisp, that's why I wrote "Lispy" in the HN title. However, there's surely some parts in the documentation that says it's a Lisp, and that might be a stretch right now. Anyhow, I wanted to get some feedback on this project and perhaps involve people early on, so not having macros yet is nothing that I'm ashamed of. I hope to implement them soon. And yes, there are a lot of good compilers out there. Kashmir is not a replacement for any of them or any of the established Lisps. :)

throwaway533634 11y ago

Here here! It seems like every week someone posts their pet flavor of lisp. This doesn't have an substance. How about coming up with something new!

kristianp 11y ago
I hope I don't get downvoted for this, but the correct way to say this is "hear hear". It's derived from "hear him" or "hear her". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear

bjwbell 11y ago

"Lisp" is easier on readers. If he said "s-expression language", I wouldn't immediately have a feel for the level of abstraction he was aiming for (webasm has an s-expression representation but is low level). I agree with the rest of your comment.