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Sounds like you coded in Scheme, not Lisp. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584082) Common Lisp was designe

by Jach 9y ago

Sounds like you coded in Scheme, not Lisp. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584082) Common Lisp was designed for the messy real world, it's a workhorse, even at the cost of 'prettiness' that Scheme fans like to point out as a benefit for Scheme. So it's been used (either directly or to output a lower level machine code) for all sorts of real world things like OSes (see the Lisp Machines), video games, CAD systems, Mars rovers (subject of this submission), etc... From the most basic level of syntax, something like https://github.com/TeMPOraL/cl-wiringpi2/blob/master/examples/blink.lisp https://github.com/TeMPOraL/cl-wiringpi2/blob/master/example... doesn't seem that different to me than the C equivalent I've written for embedded devices.

3chelon 9y ago
Yeah, I remember very little about it except a _lot_ of parentheses. Interesting to hear it is a lot more "real world" than I thought - seems my understanding is flawed... but equally interesting that I was unaware of it, having never once encountered it in my entire career.
- zeveb 9y ago
  Yeah, it's crazy what a well-kept secret Common Lisp is. I keep on running across situations in other languages where Lisp has been sitting on the solution for decades (literally) and yet no-one knows! Despite how much I like it, it's really not the Platonic ideal of languages: it has its warts, and it could develop even further than it has. But as it stands it's an amazingly good language which could be used for anything from writing operating systems and device drivers to web browsers to text editors to expert systems. I really don't understand why it's not more popular.
- kazinator 9y ago
  The average engineer has some dozen things they encountered in their career, and everything else is something that they haven't encountered once. Off the top of my head, I've never encountered such tools as: Visual Basic, PowerShell, VHDL, and IBM 370 assembly language.
  - wglb 9y ago
    Ah, but think of what you are missing!
deleted 9y ago
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by Jach 9y ago

3chelon 9y ago

Yeah, I remember very little about it except a _lot_ of parentheses. Interesting to hear it is a lot more "real world" than I thought - seems my understanding is flawed... but equally interesting that I was unaware of it, having never once encountered it in my entire career.

zeveb 9y ago
Yeah, it's crazy what a well-kept secret Common Lisp is. I keep on running across situations in other languages where Lisp has been sitting on the solution for decades (literally) and yet no-one knows! Despite how much I like it, it's really not the Platonic ideal of languages: it has its warts, and it could develop even further than it has. But as it stands it's an amazingly good language which could be used for anything from writing operating systems and device drivers to web browsers to text editors to expert systems. I really don't understand why it's not more popular.
kazinator 9y ago
The average engineer has some dozen things they encountered in their career, and everything else is something that they haven't encountered once. Off the top of my head, I've never encountered such tools as: Visual Basic, PowerShell, VHDL, and IBM 370 assembly language.
- wglb 9y ago
  Ah, but think of what you are missing!

deleted 9y ago

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