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The biggest problem, related to the NIH or not, is that other language ecosystems every month race ahead with new libraries, features, and compelling reasons to

The biggest problem, related to the NIH or not, is that other language ecosystems every month race ahead with new libraries, features, and compelling reasons to use them. The best arguments for lisp are 12 years old, in comparison. Over time the advantages of lisp have gotten smaller and smaller, assuming they were ever anything more than the rationalizations of happy users. When the options were Python, Ruby, PHP, C++ 03, and Java, this held much more weight.

outworlder 9y ago
If you are just gluing code together, Lisp is not necessarily the best choice. If you are working on difficult problems where you actually have to devise non-trivial algorithms, then Lisp is a good choice. The problem then becomes feeding that algorithm – when there are so many great libraries everywhere else to retrieve data from and send to other places, it becomes cumbersome to do it in Lisp. There is also value in restricting programmer flexibility. I suspect Golang got popular precisely because of its straighjacket (and I say this while staring at Golang code in another monitor). Turns out most people want Legos. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. Edit: typo. Edit2: everywhere else
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  IDK, I feel like this is the kind of slightly smug reasoning that's seen lisp get passed by. Just because I believe the factory-made, cheap, and standardized building blocks are a better medium than your artisan homemade clay blocks doesn't mean I'm just a dumb pleb churning out junk. I just have different values than you. I've spent lots of time crafting the greatest macros and trying to deal with missing/half finished/supported libraries in lots of languages, but at this point I just want to build and spending time on those details isn't worth my time, it doesn't help me make a better product. It turns out that declaring yourself the greatest and resting on those laurels can lead to myopic overconfidence. There's very little at this time that lisp is actually the best choice for, unless you have very limited reliance on outside libraries, and even then, other languages have different tradeoffs. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. This is incredibly pretentious and might not match reality.
  - outworlder 9y ago
    > doesn't mean I'm just a dumb pleb churning out junk I do not see how what I wrote would support this claim The actual underlying theme was: if you really need a medium to express yourself(or in this case, your thoughts), Lisp is great. The comparison to clay was because: it is mold-able, it is not easy to work with, most people do not want to get their hands dirty with it, they may not even be interested on it. And what most people will make with clay will not look good. This is not a limitation on their part, they may not even be interested. I am one of those churning out prefabs and gluing stuff together. This is what I get paid for.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      You know, I did misread what you said. The rest of your post is entirely true. I saw the kind of argument that I'm used to hearing lispers make and overreacted. My issue is I'm not really sure that lisp is actually better at doing things at a lower level. You have more freedom with syntax, sure, but I'm not at all convinced that's the same thing as building things up from the bottom. Rust, for example, will let you do low level things that lisp really can't, and Ocaml will let you build up typologies in ways lisp isn't made to. At the end of the day, languages really aren't that different, especially modern ones, you're mostly working with the same abstractions, and the question becomes is syntactic freedom more important or is a growing community more important? That actually is my biggest issue with lisp (and most other language) evangelism. It's a bunch of claims that aren't really rooted in any kind of evidence.
- pimeys 9y ago
  This. I had a task to write a code generator from JSON to an internal language, and here lisp really showed its strength. It's just so convenient to first describe your data, then write a function to output a string representation of this data in another language and finally adding small functions and macros to make the DSL look beautiful. Took about three weeks from start to production, and already another developer who was new to lisps jumped in and wrote an extension to the generator. I could've done this with other languages, especially looking at you OCaml and Haskell, but just grabbing lisp, getting results during the first days and having tremendous amount of fun made the deal.
- deckard1 9y ago
  > If you are working on difficult problems where you actually have to devise non-trivial algorithms, then Lisp is a good choice. Been hearing this nugget of Lisp elitism for 20 years. > Turns out most people want Legos. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. Oh, ffs. Spare me.

outworlder 9y ago

If you are just gluing code together, Lisp is not necessarily the best choice. If you are working on difficult problems where you actually have to devise non-trivial algorithms, then Lisp is a good choice. The problem then becomes feeding that algorithm – when there are so many great libraries everywhere else to retrieve data from and send to other places, it becomes cumbersome to do it in Lisp. There is also value in restricting programmer flexibility. I suspect Golang got popular precisely because of its straighjacket (and I say this while staring at Golang code in another monitor). Turns out most people want Legos. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. Edit: typo. Edit2: everywhere else

aaron-lebo 9y ago
IDK, I feel like this is the kind of slightly smug reasoning that's seen lisp get passed by. Just because I believe the factory-made, cheap, and standardized building blocks are a better medium than your artisan homemade clay blocks doesn't mean I'm just a dumb pleb churning out junk. I just have different values than you. I've spent lots of time crafting the greatest macros and trying to deal with missing/half finished/supported libraries in lots of languages, but at this point I just want to build and spending time on those details isn't worth my time, it doesn't help me make a better product. It turns out that declaring yourself the greatest and resting on those laurels can lead to myopic overconfidence. There's very little at this time that lisp is actually the best choice for, unless you have very limited reliance on outside libraries, and even then, other languages have different tradeoffs. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. This is incredibly pretentious and might not match reality.
- outworlder 9y ago
  > doesn't mean I'm just a dumb pleb churning out junk I do not see how what I wrote would support this claim The actual underlying theme was: if you really need a medium to express yourself(or in this case, your thoughts), Lisp is great. The comparison to clay was because: it is mold-able, it is not easy to work with, most people do not want to get their hands dirty with it, they may not even be interested on it. And what most people will make with clay will not look good. This is not a limitation on their part, they may not even be interested. I am one of those churning out prefabs and gluing stuff together. This is what I get paid for.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    You know, I did misread what you said. The rest of your post is entirely true. I saw the kind of argument that I'm used to hearing lispers make and overreacted. My issue is I'm not really sure that lisp is actually better at doing things at a lower level. You have more freedom with syntax, sure, but I'm not at all convinced that's the same thing as building things up from the bottom. Rust, for example, will let you do low level things that lisp really can't, and Ocaml will let you build up typologies in ways lisp isn't made to. At the end of the day, languages really aren't that different, especially modern ones, you're mostly working with the same abstractions, and the question becomes is syntactic freedom more important or is a growing community more important? That actually is my biggest issue with lisp (and most other language) evangelism. It's a bunch of claims that aren't really rooted in any kind of evidence.
pimeys 9y ago
This. I had a task to write a code generator from JSON to an internal language, and here lisp really showed its strength. It's just so convenient to first describe your data, then write a function to output a string representation of this data in another language and finally adding small functions and macros to make the DSL look beautiful. Took about three weeks from start to production, and already another developer who was new to lisps jumped in and wrote an extension to the generator. I could've done this with other languages, especially looking at you OCaml and Haskell, but just grabbing lisp, getting results during the first days and having tremendous amount of fun made the deal.
deckard1 9y ago
> If you are working on difficult problems where you actually have to devise non-trivial algorithms, then Lisp is a good choice. Been hearing this nugget of Lisp elitism for 20 years. > Turns out most people want Legos. Real artists are fewer in number, but those will want clay instead. Oh, ffs. Spare me.