4 ms·

Nothing would happen to Lisp. A few people would keep using it and a lot of people would keep arguing about it. Maybe Mahmud's right and there would be a new di

by gruseom 17y ago

Nothing would happen to Lisp. A few people would keep using it and a lot of people would keep arguing about it. Maybe Mahmud's right and there would be a new diversity of real-world applications; that would be nice. A more pressing question is what would happen to QPX, ITA's flight search system. Google's policy of making acquired companies rewrite their software according to Google's standards would, if applied, mean rewriting QPX in C++, Java, or Python. Given how often QPX has been cited as a system that leverages the power of Common Lisp to do complex things, that would be an interesting thing to follow. I bet Google wouldn't do that, though. For an acquisition of this size (the article says $1B), the rules are probably different. (Did they rewrite Youtube?) I must say it would be neat to see Google break their no-Lisp policy. (As a side note, it's true that if you don't care that much about continuing to evolve a complex Lisp system, it's often possible to rewrite it in a less powerful language; you just end up with a larger and less changeable codebase.)

sabya 17y ago
Orkut.com is in .NET. Isn't it?
- aaronbrethorst 17y ago
  not anymore, it looks like.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It was ported from .NET early on, as soon as it became too successful to scale. They kept the .aspx URLs so links wouldn't be broken.
- aja 17y ago
  iumltvr
- aja 17y ago
  t
jsnell 17y ago
I'm sure there would at the very least be a very long transition. And even if the core program were kept as CL code, it could still be ported over to use a lot of neat Google infrastructure. An even more pressing question: what would happen with QRES? Reservation systems don't seem like a business that Google would want to be in, but it was supposed to ITA's golden ticket. Is selling out at this point basically an admission that this decade's rewrite of all that old mainframe code didn't work either? (Disclaimer: just my personal opinions, not speaking for anyone else).
- hga 17y ago
  My guess about the problem with QRES is that after the Great Recession started the airlines that desperately want to escape their mainframe code bases now just don't have the money to do the conversion. I'm sure that's worse now with the Iceland volcano situation, which could be a money sink for many months in the future (more eruptions are possible, and this volcano has a history of triggering an eruption of a much bigger one). Dan Weinreb said there is a lot of interest in it (NOTE, seems to be gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8), but that everyone wanted someone else to go first, and that was Air Canada, which suspended their participation after the recession started. At that point I can see the leaders of ITA exploring all possibilities to keep the company alive.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  I would say that selling out is an admission that $1,000,000,000 is a lot of money.
gaius 17y ago
Did they rewrite Youtube? I am pretty sure they ported to use their own distributed filesystem at least, I remember reading about it.
anonjon 17y ago
I'm pretty sure they already at least use C and Java and maybe python (this is just based on their jobs listings). As much as it makes sense that they might think to rewrite the code base in whatever their Google standard languages are, there are certain things that you would have a tough time with. Example would be if they are doing a 'genetic algorithms and x (insert favorite graph theory technique here)' method for the search algorithm. You can certainly write that in any programming language, but rewriting that from Lisp to C or Java would require a GA library (which is probably going to be slower than compiled lisp), or writing some sort of lisp compiler/interpreter (which is not the point). Also, if Google is acquiring a whole company of talented lisp programmers, it doesn't really make sense to keep the technology and throw out all of the lisp programmers. My understanding is that Google's policy is there because lisp programmers are hard to find/make, and that they don't want to be dependent on them. It would be interesting* if they used this as an opportunity to manufacture lisp programmers and use lisp in their operations. * = unlikely
hga 17y ago
The backend of QPX already is in C++: it loads 1/2 of a 32 bit address space with the route data. The other half runs SBCL to recommend the routes. Depending on how tight that latter 2 GB is, I wonder if a piecewise replacement with something else that doesn't share the same GC would work well. A wholesale rewrite would be ugly ... I'm not entirely sure it would make sense for Google to do that, and they would send a bad signal if they did, as well as likely provide another proof of Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule). On the other hand, if it's running out of headroom (address space), a 64 bit rewrite might make sense today, in which case all bets are off. The company started in 1996 and the world of CPUs and memory is very different today.
- jsnell 17y ago
  A 64 bit rewrite happened years ago. That's why they switched from CMUCL to SBCL.
informatimago 17y ago
"I must say it would be neat to see Google break their no-Lisp policy." Yes. I could even start to answer to Google head hunters...

by gruseom 17y ago

sabya 17y ago

Orkut.com is in .NET. Isn't it?

aaronbrethorst 17y ago
not anymore, it looks like.
rbanffy 17y ago
It was ported from .NET early on, as soon as it became too successful to scale. They kept the .aspx URLs so links wouldn't be broken.
aja 17y ago
iumltvr
aja 17y ago
t

jsnell 17y ago

I'm sure there would at the very least be a very long transition. And even if the core program were kept as CL code, it could still be ported over to use a lot of neat Google infrastructure. An even more pressing question: what would happen with QRES? Reservation systems don't seem like a business that Google would want to be in, but it was supposed to ITA's golden ticket. Is selling out at this point basically an admission that this decade's rewrite of all that old mainframe code didn't work either? (Disclaimer: just my personal opinions, not speaking for anyone else).

hga 17y ago
My guess about the problem with QRES is that after the Great Recession started the airlines that desperately want to escape their mainframe code bases now just don't have the money to do the conversion. I'm sure that's worse now with the Iceland volcano situation, which could be a money sink for many months in the future (more eruptions are possible, and this volcano has a history of triggering an eruption of a much bigger one). Dan Weinreb said there is a lot of interest in it (NOTE, seems to be gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8), but that everyone wanted someone else to go first, and that was Air Canada, which suspended their participation after the recession started. At that point I can see the leaders of ITA exploring all possibilities to keep the company alive.
jimbokun 17y ago
I would say that selling out is an admission that $1,000,000,000 is a lot of money.

gaius 17y ago

Did they rewrite Youtube? I am pretty sure they ported to use their own distributed filesystem at least, I remember reading about it.

anonjon 17y ago

I'm pretty sure they already at least use C and Java and maybe python (this is just based on their jobs listings). As much as it makes sense that they might think to rewrite the code base in whatever their Google standard languages are, there are certain things that you would have a tough time with. Example would be if they are doing a 'genetic algorithms and x (insert favorite graph theory technique here)' method for the search algorithm. You can certainly write that in any programming language, but rewriting that from Lisp to C or Java would require a GA library (which is probably going to be slower than compiled lisp), or writing some sort of lisp compiler/interpreter (which is not the point). Also, if Google is acquiring a whole company of talented lisp programmers, it doesn't really make sense to keep the technology and throw out all of the lisp programmers. My understanding is that Google's policy is there because lisp programmers are hard to find/make, and that they don't want to be dependent on them. It would be interesting* if they used this as an opportunity to manufacture lisp programmers and use lisp in their operations. * = unlikely

hga 17y ago

The backend of QPX already is in C++: it loads 1/2 of a 32 bit address space with the route data. The other half runs SBCL to recommend the routes. Depending on how tight that latter 2 GB is, I wonder if a piecewise replacement with something else that doesn't share the same GC would work well. A wholesale rewrite would be ugly ... I'm not entirely sure it would make sense for Google to do that, and they would send a bad signal if they did, as well as likely provide another proof of Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule). On the other hand, if it's running out of headroom (address space), a 64 bit rewrite might make sense today, in which case all bets are off. The company started in 1996 and the world of CPUs and memory is very different today.

jsnell 17y ago
A 64 bit rewrite happened years ago. That's why they switched from CMUCL to SBCL.

informatimago 17y ago

"I must say it would be neat to see Google break their no-Lisp policy." Yes. I could even start to answer to Google head hunters...