3 ms·

There is lisp and there is lisp. The libraries and the speed do matter. While this is an interesting project it's not comparable to SBCL, Racket or Clojure.

by jules 16y ago

jimbokun 16y ago
"The libraries and the speed do matter." Does PHP lack for good libraries? That was the trick Clojure used with Java to get bootstrapped.
- Turing_Machine 16y ago
  Hmm... maybe in conjunction with HipHop for PHP? http://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php http://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php I guess if you were allowed to run compiled binaries you could just as easily use another Lisp, though -- except maybe if you needed to integrate with existing PHP applications. That might be a good use case.
- jules 16y ago
  > Does PHP lack for libraries? No. > Does PHP lack for good libraries? Yes. PHP's libraries are one of the ugliest and non lispy in existence :(
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Since they were not made with 'lisp' or anything 'lispy' in mind that should come as no surprise. PHP is about as declarative as you get, assignments are the norm, not the exception and side-effects are how just about everything is done. It's not exactly elegant, but it fills a niche and apparently fills it quite well. Though python is catching up, and even if it isn't quite as easy to deploy a large scale python web application as it is to deploy PHP the difference is getting smaller all the time.
jacquesm 16y ago
I'm curious how fast it actually is for 'real life' examples.
mahmud 16y ago
It's a working Lisp-1 with proper support for lambda conversion/reduction rules. It's a long way from being a usable Lisp, but it's theoretically feasible to take it there. It says a lot about about his work that I am very excited to hack on it for the rest of the day, and I am not easily impressed by toy Lisps :-) Tip of the hat to the author for doing the right thing, imo.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  And under a very permissive license to boot. Also it's actual code, as opposed to most 'hacker news 'news''.

There is lisp and there is lisp. The libraries and the speed do matter. While this is an interesting project it's not comparable to SBCL, Racket or Clojure.

by jules 16y ago

There is lisp and there is lisp. The libraries and the speed do matter. While this is an interesting project it's not comparable to SBCL, Racket or Clojure.

jimbokun 16y ago

"The libraries and the speed do matter." Does PHP lack for good libraries? That was the trick Clojure used with Java to get bootstrapped.

Turing_Machine 16y ago
Hmm... maybe in conjunction with HipHop for PHP? http://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php http://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php I guess if you were allowed to run compiled binaries you could just as easily use another Lisp, though -- except maybe if you needed to integrate with existing PHP applications. That might be a good use case.
jules 16y ago
> Does PHP lack for libraries? No. > Does PHP lack for good libraries? Yes. PHP's libraries are one of the ugliest and non lispy in existence :(
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Since they were not made with 'lisp' or anything 'lispy' in mind that should come as no surprise. PHP is about as declarative as you get, assignments are the norm, not the exception and side-effects are how just about everything is done. It's not exactly elegant, but it fills a niche and apparently fills it quite well. Though python is catching up, and even if it isn't quite as easy to deploy a large scale python web application as it is to deploy PHP the difference is getting smaller all the time.

jacquesm 16y ago

I'm curious how fast it actually is for 'real life' examples.

mahmud 16y ago

It's a working Lisp-1 with proper support for lambda conversion/reduction rules. It's a long way from being a usable Lisp, but it's theoretically feasible to take it there. It says a lot about about his work that I am very excited to hack on it for the rest of the day, and I am not easily impressed by toy Lisps :-) Tip of the hat to the author for doing the right thing, imo.

jacquesm 16y ago
And under a very permissive license to boot. Also it's actual code, as opposed to most 'hacker news 'news''.