4 ms·

The chips I build are in the field for decades. Compare that to the JavaScript flavor of the hour. Seems more like ADD. Common Lisp is about the only softwar

The chips I build are in the field for decades. Compare that to the JavaScript flavor of the hour. Seems more like ADD. Common Lisp is about the only software I would consider declaring long attention span. The fixed nature of a chip requires far more attention than something you can push an update to. "Ship it and fix it later" was pioneered by the software industry. That is the essence of short attention span, unconcern about details. Maybe we mean different things by that.

kazinator 10y ago
Chips can be socketed for easy removal. Of course, it's more costly to issue thousands or millions of new chips compared to a software patch, but "oh shit" fixing is possible. The act of actually swapping a chip is easier for the end user than software patching. Open the case, pull this out, put this in its place, done. Not to mention that it can be reverted. Something wrong? Pop the old one back in. Not always possible with software updates; that has to be designed in. Less can go wrong. You're not going to half-install a chip, leaving everything corrupt with no way to revert. Unless you damage the old and new. You can always swap in a good chip from a spare donor device. Doesn't always work that way with software. There may be no easy access to get to the piece you need in the donor device. The device which needs it could be so bricked that you can't run the procedure to put it in. Overall, I'd say that in the area of aftermarket patching, hardware basically wins. :)
nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Common Lisp is about the only software I would consider declaring long attention span." COBOL. Fortran. PL/I. C. C++. Ada. Java, C#, and PHP possibly given enough time. Hopefully, Python is on that list too as it wouldn't be a bad language to get stuck in for a legacy codebase. Far as massively popular ones go, at least. ""Ship it and fix it later" was pioneered by the software industry." Planned obsolescence was pioneered by the hardware industry. Appliances especially. Software split between that and lock-in. Mainstream hardware is throw-away these days. You're right that hardware sticks around longer than a lot of software on average.
antonvs 10y ago
> Compare that to the JavaScript flavor of the hour That's a rather selective and misleading comparison. The Javascript language is over 20 years old. The uses of Javascript you're presumably referring to are mainly in user interfaces, a deceptively challenging problem which hardware companies are notoriously bad at. > Common Lisp is about the only software I would consider declaring long attention span. C is much older than Common Lisp. C++ is about the same age as Common Lisp. But perhaps you're thinking of Lisp in general, including the predecessors to Common Lisp, in which case you should probably also mention Fortran. Looking at other widely used programming languages today, Python is over 25 years old, only about 7 years younger than Common Lisp. Java is also more than 20 years old. All of these languages are still widely used, in many actively used applications that themselves are 20+ years old, in every conceivable application domain. In short, the distinction you're trying to make isn't at all clear.
- kazinator 10y ago
  ANSI CL: 1994 ANSI C: 1989 "Much older" here denotes five years. The ANSI C committee was formed in 1983. The Lisp one in 1986; however, by then Common Lisp was already a thing with Guy Steele's book published (1984). That all started around 1982, supposedly. (Wikipedia: "Work on Common Lisp started in 1981 after an initiative by ARPA manager Bob Engelmore to develop a single community standard Lisp dialect.[6] Much of the initial language design was done via electronic mail.[7][8] Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. gave at the 1982 ACM Symposium on LISP and functional programming the first overview of Common Lisp.") ANSI CL is rooted in some Lisp dialects which precede the entire development of C.

kazinator 10y ago

Chips can be socketed for easy removal. Of course, it's more costly to issue thousands or millions of new chips compared to a software patch, but "oh shit" fixing is possible. The act of actually swapping a chip is easier for the end user than software patching. Open the case, pull this out, put this in its place, done. Not to mention that it can be reverted. Something wrong? Pop the old one back in. Not always possible with software updates; that has to be designed in. Less can go wrong. You're not going to half-install a chip, leaving everything corrupt with no way to revert. Unless you damage the old and new. You can always swap in a good chip from a spare donor device. Doesn't always work that way with software. There may be no easy access to get to the piece you need in the donor device. The device which needs it could be so bricked that you can't run the procedure to put it in. Overall, I'd say that in the area of aftermarket patching, hardware basically wins. :)

nickpsecurity 10y ago

"Common Lisp is about the only software I would consider declaring long attention span." COBOL. Fortran. PL/I. C. C++. Ada. Java, C#, and PHP possibly given enough time. Hopefully, Python is on that list too as it wouldn't be a bad language to get stuck in for a legacy codebase. Far as massively popular ones go, at least. ""Ship it and fix it later" was pioneered by the software industry." Planned obsolescence was pioneered by the hardware industry. Appliances especially. Software split between that and lock-in. Mainstream hardware is throw-away these days. You're right that hardware sticks around longer than a lot of software on average.

antonvs 10y ago

> Compare that to the JavaScript flavor of the hour That's a rather selective and misleading comparison. The Javascript language is over 20 years old. The uses of Javascript you're presumably referring to are mainly in user interfaces, a deceptively challenging problem which hardware companies are notoriously bad at. > Common Lisp is about the only software I would consider declaring long attention span. C is much older than Common Lisp. C++ is about the same age as Common Lisp. But perhaps you're thinking of Lisp in general, including the predecessors to Common Lisp, in which case you should probably also mention Fortran. Looking at other widely used programming languages today, Python is over 25 years old, only about 7 years younger than Common Lisp. Java is also more than 20 years old. All of these languages are still widely used, in many actively used applications that themselves are 20+ years old, in every conceivable application domain. In short, the distinction you're trying to make isn't at all clear.

kazinator 10y ago
ANSI CL: 1994 ANSI C: 1989 "Much older" here denotes five years. The ANSI C committee was formed in 1983. The Lisp one in 1986; however, by then Common Lisp was already a thing with Guy Steele's book published (1984). That all started around 1982, supposedly. (Wikipedia: "Work on Common Lisp started in 1981 after an initiative by ARPA manager Bob Engelmore to develop a single community standard Lisp dialect.[6] Much of the initial language design was done via electronic mail.[7][8] Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. gave at the 1982 ACM Symposium on LISP and functional programming the first overview of Common Lisp.") ANSI CL is rooted in some Lisp dialects which precede the entire development of C.