5 ms·

Why on earth would it fix the world? It was a step forward in the history of programming languages; but somehow the end of it, the final fix? Why would anyone e

by chvid 10y ago

Why on earth would it fix the world? It was a step forward in the history of programming languages; but somehow the end of it, the final fix? Why would anyone expect that? Programming languages are about providing a useful way for humans to formulate and implement their ideas. Starting by turning things on their head reverse polish notation style is bad start as it is counter intuitive to nearly everyone.

pjc50 10y ago
but somehow the end of it, the final fix? Why would anyone expect that? Have you met a Lisp advocate? More seriously, programming is as you say a way of turning thoughts into mechanical implementations. But not everyone thinks the same way or finds the same things intuitive. So some people stumble across Lisp or Forth and find it matches their way of thinking so perfectly that they can't understand why not everyone agrees. Pragmatism counts for a lot in programming language deployment too. There was no big platform that required or encouraged Lisp in the way that Sun did for Java, the browser does for Javascript, or web backend did for PHP and Perl.
dunkelheit 10y ago
My theory is that because programming is mostly about fighting incidental complexity, it is very easy to believe that if there were some way of getting rid of it, programs would write itself and programming would be reduced to sipping daiquiris on a beach. Lisp (especially compared to C) indeed helps to reduce incidental complexity to some extent. So it is easy fall into almost religious belief that Lisp is the way to pure programming bliss. Of course the promise is never fulfilled because domain complexity and even incidental complexity is here to stay.
- sklogic 10y ago
  > helps to reduce incidental complexity to some extent This extend stays untapped. You cannot even imagine how far this ability to eliminate complexity extends. Of course, it's not just Lisp, it's Lisp (or any other meta-language) combined with a certain design methodology. A methodology which pretty much boils down to a notion that "everything is a compiler". And, since compilers are trivial and there are well known techniques for eliminating any complexity you can find in a chain of compiler transforms, this way you can eliminate all possible complexity, no matter what your domain is. Yet, I find it amusing that only a handful of people are even aware of this ultimate methodology.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    since compilers are trivial No. and there are well known techniques for eliminating any complexity you can find in a chain of compiler transforms Any complexity? Really?
    - sklogic 10y ago
      > No. Why would you say so? There is nothing simpler than compilers. They can be broken down into pieces as small as you like which are still independent and fully sequential. Most of the rewrites you'll ever need to do can be done in a total language - i.e., you don't even need Turing-completeness for most of your code. > Any complexity? Really? I have not met a kind of complexity that cannot be decomposed into trivial pieces mechanically using this technique. And I've seen a lot of very different things. P.S. And try not to confuse a size with a complexity. E.g., C++ spec is huge, and implementing a compiler for the full language is a daunting task. Long, but not complex.
      - hga 10y ago
        Well, one thing I can tell you is that I've heard that much of the woe that came from the Common Lisp standard started with the line "any sufficiently advanced compiler..." in a discussion.
        sklogic 10y ago
        Are we talking about optimisations now? Or still about a compilation? Optimisations are a totally different story. They can bring some complexity in, but the nice part is that they're totally optional and not required for solving the problem.
        hga 10y ago
        Minimally acceptable optimizations, because if your implementation is too slow, they're not optional. The examples are legion; to go to another domain, look at one of the reasons the VLIW Itanium failed, except for some numeric code the compiler(s) couldn't schedule enough operations for those Very Long Instruction Words. (Perhaps a more primary reason was that x86 code ran too slow, denying customers an easy upgrade path that due to volume sales might have resulted in more effort being put into the VLIW compilers.)
sklogic 10y ago
By "fixing", I suppose, they meant "to eliminate the known evil that rooted deeply in the software world, such as unsafe languages, unexpressive boilerplate languages, and so on". Making sure the evil is dead for good would have been quite an achievement, sufficient to be called a "fix". Definitely not a final fix, but a step in a right direction indeed.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Why on earth would it fix the world? It was a step forward in the history o Exactly. Haskell took until 1998 to really come together! ;-) (And cabal hell lasts forever.)
- tome 10y ago
  > (And cabal hell lasts forever.) Obligatory: "have you tried Stack?"
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Obligatory: I'm dealing with a package so old that lts-1.0 has a Base too recent for what I'm dealing with. But it's research code whose recent versions have gone in a totally different direction from what I need right now, so I have to cope.

by chvid 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

but somehow the end of it, the final fix? Why would anyone expect that? Have you met a Lisp advocate? More seriously, programming is as you say a way of turning thoughts into mechanical implementations. But not everyone thinks the same way or finds the same things intuitive. So some people stumble across Lisp or Forth and find it matches their way of thinking so perfectly that they can't understand why not everyone agrees. Pragmatism counts for a lot in programming language deployment too. There was no big platform that required or encouraged Lisp in the way that Sun did for Java, the browser does for Javascript, or web backend did for PHP and Perl.

dunkelheit 10y ago

My theory is that because programming is mostly about fighting incidental complexity, it is very easy to believe that if there were some way of getting rid of it, programs would write itself and programming would be reduced to sipping daiquiris on a beach. Lisp (especially compared to C) indeed helps to reduce incidental complexity to some extent. So it is easy fall into almost religious belief that Lisp is the way to pure programming bliss. Of course the promise is never fulfilled because domain complexity and even incidental complexity is here to stay.

sklogic 10y ago
> helps to reduce incidental complexity to some extent This extend stays untapped. You cannot even imagine how far this ability to eliminate complexity extends. Of course, it's not just Lisp, it's Lisp (or any other meta-language) combined with a certain design methodology. A methodology which pretty much boils down to a notion that "everything is a compiler". And, since compilers are trivial and there are well known techniques for eliminating any complexity you can find in a chain of compiler transforms, this way you can eliminate all possible complexity, no matter what your domain is. Yet, I find it amusing that only a handful of people are even aware of this ultimate methodology.
- pjc50 10y ago
  since compilers are trivial No. and there are well known techniques for eliminating any complexity you can find in a chain of compiler transforms Any complexity? Really?
  - sklogic 10y ago
    > No. Why would you say so? There is nothing simpler than compilers. They can be broken down into pieces as small as you like which are still independent and fully sequential. Most of the rewrites you'll ever need to do can be done in a total language - i.e., you don't even need Turing-completeness for most of your code. > Any complexity? Really? I have not met a kind of complexity that cannot be decomposed into trivial pieces mechanically using this technique. And I've seen a lot of very different things. P.S. And try not to confuse a size with a complexity. E.g., C++ spec is huge, and implementing a compiler for the full language is a daunting task. Long, but not complex.
    - hga 10y ago
      Well, one thing I can tell you is that I've heard that much of the woe that came from the Common Lisp standard started with the line "any sufficiently advanced compiler..." in a discussion.
      - sklogic 10y ago
        Are we talking about optimisations now? Or still about a compilation? Optimisations are a totally different story. They can bring some complexity in, but the nice part is that they're totally optional and not required for solving the problem.
        hga 10y ago
        Minimally acceptable optimizations, because if your implementation is too slow, they're not optional. The examples are legion; to go to another domain, look at one of the reasons the VLIW Itanium failed, except for some numeric code the compiler(s) couldn't schedule enough operations for those Very Long Instruction Words. (Perhaps a more primary reason was that x86 code ran too slow, denying customers an easy upgrade path that due to volume sales might have resulted in more effort being put into the VLIW compilers.)

sklogic 10y ago

By "fixing", I suppose, they meant "to eliminate the known evil that rooted deeply in the software world, such as unsafe languages, unexpressive boilerplate languages, and so on". Making sure the evil is dead for good would have been quite an achievement, sufficient to be called a "fix". Definitely not a final fix, but a step in a right direction indeed.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>Why on earth would it fix the world? It was a step forward in the history o Exactly. Haskell took until 1998 to really come together! ;-) (And cabal hell lasts forever.)

tome 10y ago
> (And cabal hell lasts forever.) Obligatory: "have you tried Stack?"
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Obligatory: I'm dealing with a package so old that lts-1.0 has a Base too recent for what I'm dealing with. But it's research code whose recent versions have gone in a totally different direction from what I need right now, so I have to cope.