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Newcomers are always confused by the distinction, this doesn't help at all to put them in the same big bag. This classification is not wrong, but mostly useless

by junke 10y ago

Newcomers are always confused by the distinction, this doesn't help at all to put them in the same big bag. This classification is not wrong, but mostly useless when you see how the different "dialects" evolved (they are grown-up languages, nowadays). > C is a language, not a family of languages that includes Rust and Go. But Rust and Go are constantly compared to C. We always talk about C-like languages. Maybe I should have said "Algol" instead, but there is a family of languages rooted at "C", and we don't call it the C family. Go is "a compiled, statically typed language in the tradition of Algol and C". "The syntax of Rust is similar to C and C++", but "Rust is semantically very different from C and C++.[citation needed]" (wikipedia). Likewise, Scheme is semantically very different from Common Lisp. And Racket is not considered as a Scheme, even though it is related to it. You can't copy-paste any Typed-Racket expression and run it with ChezScheme. So, yes, they all belong to the same proto-language family, but constantly referring to them as a unique family is doing a disservice to each of them. Take Clojure for example: the wikipedia page says that it is inspired by C++, C#, Common Lisp, Erlang, Haskell, Mathematica, ML, Prolog, Scheme, Java, Racket and Ruby. There are plenty of influences that goes into a language, why not talk about the other ones? parentheses?

jlg23 10y ago
> So, yes, they all belong to the same proto-language family, but constantly referring to them as a unique family is doing a disservice to each of them. This is like saying that referring to dialects of English as "dialects" is doing them a disservice. If you are studying them, it is, if you are learning English as a second language, it is not. If you look close enough, the differences are huge (after all, that's why someone created a specific lisp dialect in first place), but from a distance, they are all still pretty similar. And finally, I rarely witnessed any discussion about those differences among lisp programmers, they were merely referred to when discussion how to implement something: "X-style Y", where Y is some CS-concept and X is some lisp dialect tailored to Y - and implementing anything in your preferred dialect is usually "trivial", though not necessarily performing as well as the implementation in some dialect tailored to the task.
imagist 10y ago
> Newcomers are always confused by the distinction, this doesn't help at all to put them in the same big bag. This classification is not wrong, but mostly useless when you see how the different "dialects" evolved (they are grown-up languages, nowadays). Sadly, language is determined by usage, which only incidentally correlates to usefulness. And critically, there's a feedback loop here: a word is only useful as it's used, because otherwise people don't know what it means, and you've failed to communicate your intent. "Lisp" might hypothetically be more useful if it meant "Common Lisp", but it's not useful for meaning "Common Lisp" (at least not on Hacker News) because when you say "Lisp" people assume you're talking about all the languages with the parentheses, and you've failed to communicate. > But Rust and Go are constantly compared to C. We always talk about C-like languages. Maybe I should have said "Algol" instead, but there is a family of languages rooted at "C", and we don't call it the C family. Right, the terminology commonly used for that is "C-family languages", not "C". > Go is "a compiled, statically typed language in the tradition of Algol and C". Note how they don't say "Go is a C". > Likewise, Scheme is semantically very different from Common Lisp. And Racket is not considered as a Scheme, even though it is related to it. You can't copy-paste any Typed-Racket expression and run it with ChezScheme. Yes, but in a context not centered around Common Lisp, people use "Lisp" to refer to all these languages. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but you're not able to change it. > Take Clojure for example: the wikipedia page says that it is inspired by C++, C#, Common Lisp, Erlang, Haskell, Mathematica, ML, Prolog, Scheme, Java, Racket and Ruby. There are plenty of influences that goes into a language, why not talk about the other ones? parentheses? Parentheses, macros, some functional programming constructs. Look, I'm not saying the terminology is ideal. I'm saying that, in this context, "Lisp" doesn't mean what you and I want it to mean, and trying to change that will a) fail to communicate and b) fail to change the meaning of the word in this context.
- samth 10y ago
  I agree with you about actual usage, but your wish for Lisp==CL doesn't make sense either. Is LISP 1.5 "Lisp"? What about MacLisp or InterLisp or any of the other languages that both predated Common Lisp and had "lisp" in their name? The people who create Common Lisp didn't think that is was coextensive with "Lisp", so I'm not sure why that would have become _more_ true in the last 30 years.
rat87 10y ago
There isn't really a C family maybe a not-quite c family that includes c++/java/c# languages(but not c). C isn't very statically typed. C++/java/c# are object oriented (or sort of for c++) with generics/statics/inheritance, a few functional features, limited type inference. Similar looking syntax. Rust syntax isn't really that close to c, I think it's close to ml.
- junke 10y ago
  > Similar looking syntax. Exactly my point.

by junke 10y ago

jlg23 10y ago

> So, yes, they all belong to the same proto-language family, but constantly referring to them as a unique family is doing a disservice to each of them. This is like saying that referring to dialects of English as "dialects" is doing them a disservice. If you are studying them, it is, if you are learning English as a second language, it is not. If you look close enough, the differences are huge (after all, that's why someone created a specific lisp dialect in first place), but from a distance, they are all still pretty similar. And finally, I rarely witnessed any discussion about those differences among lisp programmers, they were merely referred to when discussion how to implement something: "X-style Y", where Y is some CS-concept and X is some lisp dialect tailored to Y - and implementing anything in your preferred dialect is usually "trivial", though not necessarily performing as well as the implementation in some dialect tailored to the task.

imagist 10y ago

> Newcomers are always confused by the distinction, this doesn't help at all to put them in the same big bag. This classification is not wrong, but mostly useless when you see how the different "dialects" evolved (they are grown-up languages, nowadays). Sadly, language is determined by usage, which only incidentally correlates to usefulness. And critically, there's a feedback loop here: a word is only useful as it's used, because otherwise people don't know what it means, and you've failed to communicate your intent. "Lisp" might hypothetically be more useful if it meant "Common Lisp", but it's not useful for meaning "Common Lisp" (at least not on Hacker News) because when you say "Lisp" people assume you're talking about all the languages with the parentheses, and you've failed to communicate. > But Rust and Go are constantly compared to C. We always talk about C-like languages. Maybe I should have said "Algol" instead, but there is a family of languages rooted at "C", and we don't call it the C family. Right, the terminology commonly used for that is "C-family languages", not "C". > Go is "a compiled, statically typed language in the tradition of Algol and C". Note how they don't say "Go is a C". > Likewise, Scheme is semantically very different from Common Lisp. And Racket is not considered as a Scheme, even though it is related to it. You can't copy-paste any Typed-Racket expression and run it with ChezScheme. Yes, but in a context not centered around Common Lisp, people use "Lisp" to refer to all these languages. You can argue whether that's good or bad, but you're not able to change it. > Take Clojure for example: the wikipedia page says that it is inspired by C++, C#, Common Lisp, Erlang, Haskell, Mathematica, ML, Prolog, Scheme, Java, Racket and Ruby. There are plenty of influences that goes into a language, why not talk about the other ones? parentheses? Parentheses, macros, some functional programming constructs. Look, I'm not saying the terminology is ideal. I'm saying that, in this context, "Lisp" doesn't mean what you and I want it to mean, and trying to change that will a) fail to communicate and b) fail to change the meaning of the word in this context.

samth 10y ago
I agree with you about actual usage, but your wish for Lisp==CL doesn't make sense either. Is LISP 1.5 "Lisp"? What about MacLisp or InterLisp or any of the other languages that both predated Common Lisp and had "lisp" in their name? The people who create Common Lisp didn't think that is was coextensive with "Lisp", so I'm not sure why that would have become _more_ true in the last 30 years.

rat87 10y ago

There isn't really a C family maybe a not-quite c family that includes c++/java/c# languages(but not c). C isn't very statically typed. C++/java/c# are object oriented (or sort of for c++) with generics/statics/inheritance, a few functional features, limited type inference. Similar looking syntax. Rust syntax isn't really that close to c, I think it's close to ml.

junke 10y ago
> Similar looking syntax. Exactly my point.