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Fanatics deliberately abandon objective judgement. Many of the quotes makes me question the authors experience. Everything is relative. Compared to Fortran, Li

Fanatics deliberately abandon objective judgement. Many of the quotes makes me question the authors experience. Everything is relative. Compared to Fortran, Lisp is all that and more. Compared to modern languages (say, Haskell), not so much.

lispm 9y ago
Haskell appeared in 1990. Around 1987 I was as a student sitting in front of a real Lisp Machine, a Symbolics 3600, running in an AI research lab for natural language interaction. The machine with a stack-based CPU ran an object-oriented operating system written in a million lines of Lisp, with full source code and runtime changes. There is nothing which will blow your mind like that.
- progman 9y ago
  Those amazing Lisp machines were far ahead of their time. Unfortunately the hardware was very expensive, and it lacked power. Today we have the right cheap hardware. Actually, there is a Lisp revival going on in the OSS community. Consider McClim [1] for instance which attempts to port the amazing GUI of the Lisp Machines to PCs. It already works. [1] https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/ https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/
  - erikj 9y ago
    McClim existed for decades and it's still struggling to become production-ready, a poor example of the "revival".
    - progman 9y ago
      > it's still struggling to become production-ready McClim is not a business case. It is just a project to revive the most sophisticated GUI for Lisp. The graphical shell [1] for instance which already works gives a remarkable impression. [1] https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screenshots/listener1.jpg https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screensh...
  - jcelerier 9y ago
    Truly amazing. https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screenshots/2eL0LhQ.png https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screensh...
  - lispm 9y ago
    At that time the machine didn't lack power. There was nothing similar. Large disks, large virtual memory, a 68k processor for driving the frontend IO, large bitmap screen, 10+ bus slots, tape drive, ethernet, ... all for a single user. It's hard to imagine, but 10MB RAM were amazingly expensive in the early 80s. Similar for harddisks with 100MB... On a timeshared VAX 10-100 people had to share this amount of RAM...
progman 9y ago
> Many of the quotes makes me question the authors experience Do you have enough experience that you dare to judge him? > Compared to modern languages (say, Haskell), not so much. I disagree. I was in a lot of languages, in all different programming styles. Lisp still is the language with a maximum of freedom of programming, probably also regarding productivity. Only Nim comes close. Haskell may look elegant at the surface, regarding productivity however I don't recommend it except for DSL and compiler construction. If you are not a world class expert in Haskell then in most cases Haskell takes a lot more time for development than other languages (say Lisp, Python, C++, even Rust).
- dmytrish 9y ago
  > in most cases Haskell takes a lot more time for development than other languages - and takes negligible maintenance/refactoring time compared to Lisp/Python/C++. Maintenance timesink might easily outweigh the gain in development time. That's the promise of strong type systems: preventing bugs from happening before you have to debug them in production and it does not come absolutely free.
  - lispm 9y ago
    In Lisp you can change the programs while they are running, in ways not possible in Haskell. The time Haskell needs to recompile the code to machine code, I have fixed the Lisp bug already.
    - dmytrish 9y ago
      ...and introduced two new bugs.
      - lispm 9y ago
        and tested and fixed them, too.
      - junke 9y ago
        Are you fighting the Hydra?

lispm 9y ago

Haskell appeared in 1990. Around 1987 I was as a student sitting in front of a real Lisp Machine, a Symbolics 3600, running in an AI research lab for natural language interaction. The machine with a stack-based CPU ran an object-oriented operating system written in a million lines of Lisp, with full source code and runtime changes. There is nothing which will blow your mind like that.

progman 9y ago
Those amazing Lisp machines were far ahead of their time. Unfortunately the hardware was very expensive, and it lacked power. Today we have the right cheap hardware. Actually, there is a Lisp revival going on in the OSS community. Consider McClim [1] for instance which attempts to port the amazing GUI of the Lisp Machines to PCs. It already works. [1] https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/ https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/
- erikj 9y ago
  McClim existed for decades and it's still struggling to become production-ready, a poor example of the "revival".
  - progman 9y ago
    > it's still struggling to become production-ready McClim is not a business case. It is just a project to revive the most sophisticated GUI for Lisp. The graphical shell [1] for instance which already works gives a remarkable impression. [1] https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screenshots/listener1.jpg https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screensh...
- jcelerier 9y ago
  Truly amazing. https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screenshots/2eL0LhQ.png https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screensh...
- lispm 9y ago
  At that time the machine didn't lack power. There was nothing similar. Large disks, large virtual memory, a 68k processor for driving the frontend IO, large bitmap screen, 10+ bus slots, tape drive, ethernet, ... all for a single user. It's hard to imagine, but 10MB RAM were amazingly expensive in the early 80s. Similar for harddisks with 100MB... On a timeshared VAX 10-100 people had to share this amount of RAM...

progman 9y ago

> Many of the quotes makes me question the authors experience Do you have enough experience that you dare to judge him? > Compared to modern languages (say, Haskell), not so much. I disagree. I was in a lot of languages, in all different programming styles. Lisp still is the language with a maximum of freedom of programming, probably also regarding productivity. Only Nim comes close. Haskell may look elegant at the surface, regarding productivity however I don't recommend it except for DSL and compiler construction. If you are not a world class expert in Haskell then in most cases Haskell takes a lot more time for development than other languages (say Lisp, Python, C++, even Rust).

dmytrish 9y ago
> in most cases Haskell takes a lot more time for development than other languages - and takes negligible maintenance/refactoring time compared to Lisp/Python/C++. Maintenance timesink might easily outweigh the gain in development time. That's the promise of strong type systems: preventing bugs from happening before you have to debug them in production and it does not come absolutely free.
- lispm 9y ago
  In Lisp you can change the programs while they are running, in ways not possible in Haskell. The time Haskell needs to recompile the code to machine code, I have fixed the Lisp bug already.
  - dmytrish 9y ago
    ...and introduced two new bugs.
    - lispm 9y ago
      and tested and fixed them, too.
    - junke 9y ago
      Are you fighting the Hydra?