4 ms·

So here we have a Lisp programmer -- with no apparent irony -- using the term "cottage industry" in connection with Java. > Watching Java programmers is like h

So here we have a Lisp programmer -- with no apparent irony -- using the term "cottage industry" in connection with Java. > Watching Java programmers is like having a tribal shaman for a next-door neighbor. This coming from the guys still harping on about the resplendent days of unbridled hacker ecstasy in the Garden of Genera. Pot. Kettle. Black.

mahmud 16y ago
Why should there be an apparent irony? Lisp is a family of competing ideas and implementations, this can be considered bad and a "cottage industry" in the same way that the free market can be faulted for being "disparate solutions, of various quality offered by a multitude of people and companies". IOW, not bad at all; beauty is in the chaos. With respect to Java, there is only one real solution provider, and the cottage industry is in the punditry that begs and supplicates to this sole provider on behalf of various users and their respective interests. So Java is more like the political lobbyists and lawyers. Regarding Genera, dropping the G-word just marks one as long out of shape, Lisp-wise. Lately, the fuss is all about JVM, CLR, multicore, large scale distribution, packaging, semantic web, machine learning, mobile and application platforms. You can even grow a beard and find nirvana on the JVM: http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/ http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/ http://clojure.org/ http://clojure.org/
- seertaak 16y ago
  It's a bit trite to compare Lisp to the free market: it's not particularly difficult for me to concoct the same metaphor for Java. ("The wealth of libraries and frameworks, each vying for maximum use, exhibits emergent patterns of creative destruction, similar to those prevalent in the free market". See? Not that hard.) It may be well true that there are more competing implementations of Lisp. (Though that is also open to debate; after all, what is Android if not Java on a new VM? What of OpenJDK?) And in any case, the great majority of Lisp implementations are toy languages that lack the stability and features to be used in any serious environment. Your other points: * If armed bear isn't dead, it definitely smells funny -- at least the last time I checked (~1.5 years ago). * Clojure is cool in large part because it has access to the thousands of Java libraries written by those shamen-like programmers you get such a kick out of mocking. My point is that a programming language is just a tool to get something done. Those that mock supposedly inferior languages miss the point that there are aspects to those languages or environments that make them appealing for the job at hand. If I want to do a web site, I'd use PHP with WordPress, because I most likely won't have to write any code at all. If I want to write a web app, I might use Ruby or Python. If I'm a real-time market trading platform, I'll use Java because there's so much reliable, mature code out there and it's really fast. If I want to write a music application or plugin, then I'm going to need to use C++ to communicate with ASIO and VST. And, finally, if I want to write a Lisp interpreter, I'll use Lisp ;)
  - mahmud 16y ago
    ABCL is far from dead. I hack on it and working on a Lisp SDK for Android. My opinions are backed by code. I implemented this new Java feature in ~30 lines of CL, there was no committee involved: http://mahmud.arablug.org/java-try-with-resource-in-lisp.html http://mahmud.arablug.org/java-try-with-resource-in-lisp.htm... Something has to be said for expressiveness when one guy with an spare hour can implement what might be considered a major language feature like this. Makes you wonder what else is being made difficult by the language; how much time and money, not to mention sanity, are being wasted trying to cut wood with a dull knife?

mahmud 16y ago

Why should there be an apparent irony? Lisp is a family of competing ideas and implementations, this can be considered bad and a "cottage industry" in the same way that the free market can be faulted for being "disparate solutions, of various quality offered by a multitude of people and companies". IOW, not bad at all; beauty is in the chaos. With respect to Java, there is only one real solution provider, and the cottage industry is in the punditry that begs and supplicates to this sole provider on behalf of various users and their respective interests. So Java is more like the political lobbyists and lawyers. Regarding Genera, dropping the G-word just marks one as long out of shape, Lisp-wise. Lately, the fuss is all about JVM, CLR, multicore, large scale distribution, packaging, semantic web, machine learning, mobile and application platforms. You can even grow a beard and find nirvana on the JVM: http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/ http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/ http://clojure.org/ http://clojure.org/

seertaak 16y ago
It's a bit trite to compare Lisp to the free market: it's not particularly difficult for me to concoct the same metaphor for Java. ("The wealth of libraries and frameworks, each vying for maximum use, exhibits emergent patterns of creative destruction, similar to those prevalent in the free market". See? Not that hard.) It may be well true that there are more competing implementations of Lisp. (Though that is also open to debate; after all, what is Android if not Java on a new VM? What of OpenJDK?) And in any case, the great majority of Lisp implementations are toy languages that lack the stability and features to be used in any serious environment. Your other points: * If armed bear isn't dead, it definitely smells funny -- at least the last time I checked (~1.5 years ago). * Clojure is cool in large part because it has access to the thousands of Java libraries written by those shamen-like programmers you get such a kick out of mocking. My point is that a programming language is just a tool to get something done. Those that mock supposedly inferior languages miss the point that there are aspects to those languages or environments that make them appealing for the job at hand. If I want to do a web site, I'd use PHP with WordPress, because I most likely won't have to write any code at all. If I want to write a web app, I might use Ruby or Python. If I'm a real-time market trading platform, I'll use Java because there's so much reliable, mature code out there and it's really fast. If I want to write a music application or plugin, then I'm going to need to use C++ to communicate with ASIO and VST. And, finally, if I want to write a Lisp interpreter, I'll use Lisp ;)
- mahmud 16y ago
  ABCL is far from dead. I hack on it and working on a Lisp SDK for Android. My opinions are backed by code. I implemented this new Java feature in ~30 lines of CL, there was no committee involved: http://mahmud.arablug.org/java-try-with-resource-in-lisp.html http://mahmud.arablug.org/java-try-with-resource-in-lisp.htm... Something has to be said for expressiveness when one guy with an spare hour can implement what might be considered a major language feature like this. Makes you wonder what else is being made difficult by the language; how much time and money, not to mention sanity, are being wasted trying to cut wood with a dull knife?