12 ms·

What popular programs are written in Lisp?

eudox 11y ago
Maxima and pgloader http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://pgloader.io/ http://pgloader.io/
- defgeneric 11y ago
  pgloader (Dimitri Fontaine) is a great piece of software. There's also cl-abnf from the same author and project which is another great example of the expressive power of common lisp. Also, everything Fernando Boretti does is awesome ;) https://github.com/eudoxia0 https://github.com/eudoxia0 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015/ http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015/ https://github.com/dimitri/cl-abnf https://github.com/dimitri/cl-abnf
xrange 11y ago
A better question: "What impressive programs are written in Lisp?". Or "Why isn't there a Squeak-like Lisp machine environment, where 'compatibility' doesn't have to matter?". If a language is incredibly productive and programmable, why don't we already have a VPRI-like STEPS environment in 20,000 lines? http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  There is OpenGenera (but more than 20k sloc): https://github.com/ynniv/opengenera https://github.com/ynniv/opengenera
- delish 11y ago
  > What impressive programs are written in Lisp? I'd only call this anecdote, but one or more benchmarks assert that cl-ppcre, common lisp's perl-compatible regex implementation, is faster than any other, include perl's. The larger question I'm intuiting from your post, "Why doesn't language power make a difference in practice?" I don't have an answer to.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    > Why doesn't language power make a difference in practice? Depends on your definition of "make a difference in practice". If you mean "make the language become one of the dominant ones", yeah, that doesn't seem to have happened. Either Lisp is less effective in the large than one would expect from its power, or it's less powerful in practice than people think, or power has almost no relation to language dominance. But if you mean "make a difference to the user", well, it lets the user more easily write the program that the user wants to write. In practice, that makes a difference - to that user.
    - ianmcgowan 11y ago
      This is covered in the article. You might say it's the central point of the article - lisp attracts "lone wolf" programmers who want to build perfect abstractions closely mapped to the real-world problem; as opposed to projects that require many man-years of effort run by MBA's who want fungible "resources" to do their tiny-bite-sized pieces according to spec. The philosophy is different.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- defgeneric 11y ago
  State of the Common Lisp Ecosystem, 2015 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015
kruhft 11y ago
emacs (mostly)
vmorgulis 11y ago
Emacs? Edit: Urbit has a Lisp (http://urbit.org/ http://urbit.org/)
- kruhft 11y ago
  The underlying 'functional assembly' VM language of Urbit (Nock) is a lisp that works on arbitrarily large integers. Here's a compiler for it I wrote a while ago, written in Common Lisp: https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/29103c2dfaa67f4fd344 https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/29103c2dfaa67f4fd344
  - vmorgulis 11y ago
    Interesting. The music on your home page reminds me a bit Utopia soundtrack (like the sound of the frog). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYVb8Q5i9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYVb8Q5i9w
    - kruhft 11y ago
      Thanks. I wrote it myself. I just put out a new album yesterday: http://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/listener
- defgeneric 11y ago
  Urbit is deeply reactionary.
  - vmorgulis 11y ago
    Curtis Yarvin, yes. Brendan Eich is a bit too.
dmbaggett 11y ago
For one, the service that performs the vast majority of airfare searches -- formerly ITA Software, now Google Flights. Having spent time at the MIT AI Lab and having co-founded a company whose principal product was a Lisp/C hybrid, I think the challenge with mainstream adoption of both Lisp-like and functional languages is the syntax. There's an element of "don't use a programming language that's hard to hire for" but I think that's secondary as it never bothered us or posed a real problem. Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot games (which I also worked on) used Lisp for all the character control logic.
- kruhft 11y ago
  > I think the challenge with mainstream adoption of both Lisp-like and functional languages is the syntax Ironic(?) considering there is almost no syntax to Lisp.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    I know almost nothing about lisp, but what comes to mind is car, cdr which aren't exactly the most descriptive keywords of programming languages I have seen. (I think they are replaced in modern versions but my point still stands as I remember the old ones, not the new)
    - kruhft 11y ago
      Yes, sometimes 'car' and 'cdr' are replaced with 'first' and 'rest' and are some of the first things you cover when learning the language, so I don't think the names would really be hindering adoption for those that try to learn the language. The benefits of car and cdr are that they can be composed: (caadr l) instead of (car (car (cdr l))) for example.
      - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
        Well, if you use "first" and "rest", then (caadr l) could become (firrest l) or something like that...
ronjouch 11y ago
I'm regularly hearing about web applications written in ClojureScript, a.k.a. Clojure (a dialect of Lisp, [1]) compiled to JavaScript. Recently I've heard of: - https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-player https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-player - https://precursorapp.com/ https://precursorapp.com/ (not open-source) [1] http://www.clojure.org/ http://www.clojure.org/
- dopamean 11y ago
  Clojurescript is not "also known as" Clojure.
  - betenoire 11y ago
    That's not what he said: aka. Clojure (...) compiled to JavaScript You stopped reading a few words too soon :)
    - dopamean 11y ago
      Ha. I misread. Thanks for the correction.
  - dctoedt 11y ago
    > Clojurescript is not "also known as" Clojure. The GP says "ClojureScript, a.k.a. Clojure ... compiled to Javascript, which (I believe) is accurate.
- zubairq 11y ago
  There are also others, such as Appshare which I have built
nabla9 11y ago
Popularity is not the correct measure stick. Lisp is more like research language than implementation language for bean counting apps. Better question is what bleeding edge things have originated, are being done or have been done in Lisp. John Carmak is doing VR research with Racket. Christian Schafmeister doing molecular metaprogramming. Raytheon implemented a signal processing analysis pipeline for missile defense in Lisp Commercial Lisp vendors keep lists of some of their customers. Specialized Cad programs like Bentley PlantWise are not popular but they are very complex. http://franz.com/success/ http://franz.com/success/ http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/ http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/
jdblair 11y ago
AutoCAD uses AutoLISP for scripting and extension. Its been a significant part of AutoCAD since 1986. http://ronleigh.com/autolisp/ahistory.htm http://ronleigh.com/autolisp/ahistory.htm
ZenoArrow 11y ago
If you count dynamic websites as programs then you're using one right now. ;-)
stray 11y ago
The software I produce at work is Ruby. I don't know that it's popular -- but it is central to a large company's operations. But I generate and validate that Ruby code with Common Lisp -- in other words, I write Lisp that writes correct, idiomatic Ruby. I would be very surprised if I were the only person doing this.
- eudox 11y ago
  Have you written about this somewhere? I've love to read more about it.
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  Is it possible that you can share some information on this, if allowed by your company / employer? This is a first I've heard of this, sounds quite interesting.
- copperx 11y ago
  I understand why you might want to do that, but why are your reasons for doing it?
incepted 11y ago
Not many, but even so, this is never the right question to ask. That question would be: what programs are written in <LANGUAGE> that couldn't benefit from being rewritten in another language? And most often, the answer to that question is none. Because languages matter a lot less than language fanatics want you to think. As for Lisp, I used to be a total fan until I realize the importance of a sound static type system, and now I will never go back. Lisp will never go anywhere because this is the 21st century and we know now that static type systems are an absolute requirement for modern programming.
- lokedhs 11y ago
  Right. That's why no one seriously consider Javascript for any new project, and no one would propose the idea of using it on a server. I am not saying that you are wrong in liking static typing, but arguing that dynamically typed languages are non-starters in this decade is a statement that is easily disproven by the existence of Javascript.
mkramlich 11y ago
Signpost.com's backend was Lisp. Originally, when the company was named Postabon. I know because I worked directly with their cofounding CTO, Shaneal Manek, during the early buildout phase. I wrote their launch iPhone app, and it talked to a web service Shaneal made, in Lisp. Our app was featured on live TV during some morning business news segment, major network. It was pretty exciting. Anyway they later shifted the feature set and, I believe, rewrote the backend in Java, after Shaneal went to Greplin. Pure speculation for the rewrite was because it was considered as being easier or "cheaper" to find Java devs. Though I'd argue a sharp/solid engineer can work in any language, and Shaneal was definitely that. I'd suggest also that perhaps the biggest strategic win was that the combination of our slick iPhone app and the Lisp backend with the CxO's pedigrees all helped them to eventually land investment from Google Ventures. Runway and eyeballs are king. I also worked at Orbitz as a senior engineer back when they used ITA and ITA had not yet been bought by Google. So I can +1 confirm on what is probably the most famous commercial application of Lisp.

eudox 11y ago

Maxima and pgloader http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ http://pgloader.io/ http://pgloader.io/

defgeneric 11y ago
pgloader (Dimitri Fontaine) is a great piece of software. There's also cl-abnf from the same author and project which is another great example of the expressive power of common lisp. Also, everything Fernando Boretti does is awesome ;) https://github.com/eudoxia0 https://github.com/eudoxia0 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015/ http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015/ https://github.com/dimitri/cl-abnf https://github.com/dimitri/cl-abnf

xrange 11y ago

A better question: "What impressive programs are written in Lisp?". Or "Why isn't there a Squeak-like Lisp machine environment, where 'compatibility' doesn't have to matter?". If a language is incredibly productive and programmable, why don't we already have a VPRI-like STEPS environment in 20,000 lines? http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf

vmorgulis 11y ago
There is OpenGenera (but more than 20k sloc): https://github.com/ynniv/opengenera https://github.com/ynniv/opengenera
delish 11y ago
> What impressive programs are written in Lisp? I'd only call this anecdote, but one or more benchmarks assert that cl-ppcre, common lisp's perl-compatible regex implementation, is faster than any other, include perl's. The larger question I'm intuiting from your post, "Why doesn't language power make a difference in practice?" I don't have an answer to.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  > Why doesn't language power make a difference in practice? Depends on your definition of "make a difference in practice". If you mean "make the language become one of the dominant ones", yeah, that doesn't seem to have happened. Either Lisp is less effective in the large than one would expect from its power, or it's less powerful in practice than people think, or power has almost no relation to language dominance. But if you mean "make a difference to the user", well, it lets the user more easily write the program that the user wants to write. In practice, that makes a difference - to that user.
  - ianmcgowan 11y ago
    This is covered in the article. You might say it's the central point of the article - lisp attracts "lone wolf" programmers who want to build perfect abstractions closely mapped to the real-world problem; as opposed to projects that require many man-years of effort run by MBA's who want fungible "resources" to do their tiny-bite-sized pieces according to spec. The philosophy is different.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
defgeneric 11y ago
State of the Common Lisp Ecosystem, 2015 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015 http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015

kruhft 11y ago

emacs (mostly)

vmorgulis 11y ago

Emacs? Edit: Urbit has a Lisp (http://urbit.org/ http://urbit.org/)

kruhft 11y ago
The underlying 'functional assembly' VM language of Urbit (Nock) is a lisp that works on arbitrarily large integers. Here's a compiler for it I wrote a while ago, written in Common Lisp: https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/29103c2dfaa67f4fd344 https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/29103c2dfaa67f4fd344
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  Interesting. The music on your home page reminds me a bit Utopia soundtrack (like the sound of the frog). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYVb8Q5i9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYVb8Q5i9w
  - kruhft 11y ago
    Thanks. I wrote it myself. I just put out a new album yesterday: http://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/listener
defgeneric 11y ago
Urbit is deeply reactionary.
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  Curtis Yarvin, yes. Brendan Eich is a bit too.

dmbaggett 11y ago

For one, the service that performs the vast majority of airfare searches -- formerly ITA Software, now Google Flights. Having spent time at the MIT AI Lab and having co-founded a company whose principal product was a Lisp/C hybrid, I think the challenge with mainstream adoption of both Lisp-like and functional languages is the syntax. There's an element of "don't use a programming language that's hard to hire for" but I think that's secondary as it never bothered us or posed a real problem. Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot games (which I also worked on) used Lisp for all the character control logic.

kruhft 11y ago
> I think the challenge with mainstream adoption of both Lisp-like and functional languages is the syntax Ironic(?) considering there is almost no syntax to Lisp.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  I know almost nothing about lisp, but what comes to mind is car, cdr which aren't exactly the most descriptive keywords of programming languages I have seen. (I think they are replaced in modern versions but my point still stands as I remember the old ones, not the new)
  - kruhft 11y ago
    Yes, sometimes 'car' and 'cdr' are replaced with 'first' and 'rest' and are some of the first things you cover when learning the language, so I don't think the names would really be hindering adoption for those that try to learn the language. The benefits of car and cdr are that they can be composed: (caadr l) instead of (car (car (cdr l))) for example.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      Well, if you use "first" and "rest", then (caadr l) could become (firrest l) or something like that...

ronjouch 11y ago

I'm regularly hearing about web applications written in ClojureScript, a.k.a. Clojure (a dialect of Lisp, [1]) compiled to JavaScript. Recently I've heard of: - https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-player https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema-player - https://precursorapp.com/ https://precursorapp.com/ (not open-source) [1] http://www.clojure.org/ http://www.clojure.org/

dopamean 11y ago
Clojurescript is not "also known as" Clojure.
- betenoire 11y ago
  That's not what he said: aka. Clojure (...) compiled to JavaScript You stopped reading a few words too soon :)
  - dopamean 11y ago
    Ha. I misread. Thanks for the correction.
- dctoedt 11y ago
  > Clojurescript is not "also known as" Clojure. The GP says "ClojureScript, a.k.a. Clojure ... compiled to Javascript, which (I believe) is accurate.
zubairq 11y ago
There are also others, such as Appshare which I have built

nabla9 11y ago

Popularity is not the correct measure stick. Lisp is more like research language than implementation language for bean counting apps. Better question is what bleeding edge things have originated, are being done or have been done in Lisp. John Carmak is doing VR research with Racket. Christian Schafmeister doing molecular metaprogramming. Raytheon implemented a signal processing analysis pipeline for missile defense in Lisp Commercial Lisp vendors keep lists of some of their customers. Specialized Cad programs like Bentley PlantWise are not popular but they are very complex. http://franz.com/success/ http://franz.com/success/ http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/ http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/

jdblair 11y ago

AutoCAD uses AutoLISP for scripting and extension. Its been a significant part of AutoCAD since 1986. http://ronleigh.com/autolisp/ahistory.htm http://ronleigh.com/autolisp/ahistory.htm

ZenoArrow 11y ago

If you count dynamic websites as programs then you're using one right now. ;-)

stray 11y ago

The software I produce at work is Ruby. I don't know that it's popular -- but it is central to a large company's operations. But I generate and validate that Ruby code with Common Lisp -- in other words, I write Lisp that writes correct, idiomatic Ruby. I would be very surprised if I were the only person doing this.

eudox 11y ago
Have you written about this somewhere? I've love to read more about it.
giancarlostoro 11y ago
Is it possible that you can share some information on this, if allowed by your company / employer? This is a first I've heard of this, sounds quite interesting.
copperx 11y ago
I understand why you might want to do that, but why are your reasons for doing it?

incepted 11y ago

Not many, but even so, this is never the right question to ask. That question would be: what programs are written in <LANGUAGE> that couldn't benefit from being rewritten in another language? And most often, the answer to that question is none. Because languages matter a lot less than language fanatics want you to think. As for Lisp, I used to be a total fan until I realize the importance of a sound static type system, and now I will never go back. Lisp will never go anywhere because this is the 21st century and we know now that static type systems are an absolute requirement for modern programming.

lokedhs 11y ago
Right. That's why no one seriously consider Javascript for any new project, and no one would propose the idea of using it on a server. I am not saying that you are wrong in liking static typing, but arguing that dynamically typed languages are non-starters in this decade is a statement that is easily disproven by the existence of Javascript.

mkramlich 11y ago

Signpost.com's backend was Lisp. Originally, when the company was named Postabon. I know because I worked directly with their cofounding CTO, Shaneal Manek, during the early buildout phase. I wrote their launch iPhone app, and it talked to a web service Shaneal made, in Lisp. Our app was featured on live TV during some morning business news segment, major network. It was pretty exciting. Anyway they later shifted the feature set and, I believe, rewrote the backend in Java, after Shaneal went to Greplin. Pure speculation for the rewrite was because it was considered as being easier or "cheaper" to find Java devs. Though I'd argue a sharp/solid engineer can work in any language, and Shaneal was definitely that. I'd suggest also that perhaps the biggest strategic win was that the combination of our slick iPhone app and the Lisp backend with the CxO's pedigrees all helped them to eventually land investment from Google Ventures. Runway and eyeballs are king. I also worked at Orbitz as a senior engineer back when they used ITA and ITA had not yet been bought by Google. So I can +1 confirm on what is probably the most famous commercial application of Lisp.