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lisp is beautiful. The crown jewels of computer science. getting to spend time with it reminds you that programming can be fun (and profound) while you are bei

by Tistel 11y ago

lisp is beautiful. The crown jewels of computer science. getting to spend time with it reminds you that programming can be fun (and profound) while you are being paid to work with some awful drudgery language solving some stupid problem. Being close to lisp, in this way, is like being at the same party as Audrey Hepburn. It reminds you of grace.

snaky 11y ago
Joel Moses has been credited with coining the phrase in the 1970s APL is like a beautiful diamond - flawless, beautifully symmetrical. But you can't add anything to it. If you try to glue on another diamond, you don't get a bigger diamond. Lisp is like a ball of mud. Add more and it's still a ball of mud - it still looks like Lisp.
- progman 11y ago
  > Lisp is like a ball of mud. Add more and it's still a ball of mud - it still looks like Lisp. Such claims are usually made by people who haven't discovered the power of Lisp yet. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html
  - lispm 11y ago
    In this case, Joel Moses could easily know more about Lisp than we both together... probably he speaks from deep experience.
  - snaky 11y ago
    Such claims are usually made by people who haven't discovered the beauty of APL yet.
    - progman 11y ago
      APL is actually beautiful. Watch the development of Conways game of life in APL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4
- cema 11y ago
  Mud can be shaped in a large number of useful and beautiful things.
  - snaky 11y ago
    That would be pretty difficult to make a diamond from mud. > Writing a macro that understands forks and hooks is an exercise for a beginner – if the operators covered are strictly monadic and/or dyadic as are those in J. However in Lisp all those optional auxiliary and keyword arguments immensely complicate matters. In order to make it operational within a month or so of effort a tacit macro could be implemented to work just on a subset of Lisp operators. http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500180 http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500180

by Tistel 11y ago

snaky 11y ago

Joel Moses has been credited with coining the phrase in the 1970s APL is like a beautiful diamond - flawless, beautifully symmetrical. But you can't add anything to it. If you try to glue on another diamond, you don't get a bigger diamond. Lisp is like a ball of mud. Add more and it's still a ball of mud - it still looks like Lisp.

progman 11y ago
> Lisp is like a ball of mud. Add more and it's still a ball of mud - it still looks like Lisp. Such claims are usually made by people who haven't discovered the power of Lisp yet. http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html
- lispm 11y ago
  In this case, Joel Moses could easily know more about Lisp than we both together... probably he speaks from deep experience.
- snaky 11y ago
  Such claims are usually made by people who haven't discovered the beauty of APL yet.
  - progman 11y ago
    APL is actually beautiful. Watch the development of Conways game of life in APL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4
cema 11y ago
Mud can be shaped in a large number of useful and beautiful things.
- snaky 11y ago
  That would be pretty difficult to make a diamond from mud. > Writing a macro that understands forks and hooks is an exercise for a beginner – if the operators covered are strictly monadic and/or dyadic as are those in J. However in Lisp all those optional auxiliary and keyword arguments immensely complicate matters. In order to make it operational within a month or so of effort a tacit macro could be implemented to work just on a subset of Lisp operators. http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500180 http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10500180