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> COBOL was a huge improvement at the time, an innovation in readability. BASIC is a good demonstration of why the platonic ideal language is wrong: it was desi
by outworlder 10y ago
> COBOL was a huge improvement at the time, an innovation in readability. BASIC is a good demonstration of why the platonic ideal language is wrong: it was designed for beginners (that's what the acronym stands for), and it did a reasonably good job at that.
Sure. But these systems were created from the ground up, every single time. Given a good foundation, which could be Lisp or something even better, you can whip up the "simpler" languages in no time. Even ditch the parentheses if you so desire. While getting all the benefits of the underlying system.
> Garbage collection is a nice feature, but it doesn't fit everywhere. Sometimes you want to manage your own memory. That's why we have more than one language.
Sure. But I disagree with that's the reason why we have multiple languages. There's no single reason, it is probably a mixture of preferences, previous knowledge, budget, time to market (JS!) among others.
We can manage our own memory from higher level languages. We can compile them. We can even make them spit out assembly custom-made for a given, niche application (see the Galileo magnetometer patch).
Sorry if I sound like a smug lisp weenie. But even that description is not accurate: had we focused our collective resources towards "perfection", as that sentence implies, we would have something way better than Lisp itself. Or anything else that we currently use.
It is as if we had invented jet engines before planes. But then placed steam engines on them because they were cheaper. Or that more people understood them.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe reality is: programming languages are fun, but the programming language is not the biggest barrier to writing good code, or even getting it done quickly. Good programmers can write good code in any language, lousy programmers will write lousy code in every language. Malbolge might be excluded from that, but with a decent macro pre-processor, even brainfuck can be workable.
- elbear 10y agoMost programmers are average though, so it helps to have languages that make it harder for you to introduce bugs.
- euyyn 10y agoLisp didn't miss the train because it was too good or because people were idiots. For a good foundation to be good it has to meet the pre-requisite to work for most use cases. Lisp didn't when C did, in a time when hardware was small and expensive. Times have changed now? Sure, but history didn't wait.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThat's a significant part of it. Check out PreScheme, though, for how that might have worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PreScheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PreScheme It's a Scheme created as a C alternative for low-level programming used in a verified Scheme48, VLISP. It was quite efficient. LISP's doing more of that kind of thing might have fueled more use of the language.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoLisp worked well before C was even conceived. It's that C could be fitted on less expensive hardware, which was in turn easier to market to companies. C and UNIX success is a literal "worse is better" example - crappy solutions (compared to other contemporary ones), but with smaller up-front costs, so easier to sell. Buyers didn't seem to care that it costed more down the line.
- pjmlp 10y agoUNIX and C were free as beer, because AT&T was forbidden to sell it and initially gave it away. Lisp usually required expensive mainframes and workstations. Of course C got the adoption of the 80's hipsters with such price tag.
- kaeluka 10y ago> Given a good foundation, which could be Lisp or something even better, you can whip up the "simpler" languages in no time. In practise, that foundation (for many programs) is Java byte code.