4 ms·

I'm glad that so many people find Common Lisp useful and practical. I just wish they realized that at this point, nobody else ever will. It's showing it's age.

by lukev 16y ago

I'm glad that so many people find Common Lisp useful and practical. I just wish they realized that at this point, nobody else ever will. It's showing it's age. It's incredibly idiosyncratic. Noone new is ever going to start loving it. Clojure may only be a blip on the radar in the grand, glacial evolution of LISP, but it's really, really nice that there's a featureful, modern lisp that a 21st century developer can actually pick up, use, and enjoy.

mahmud 16y ago
Hopefully, no one will read the cutest programming book since Starting Forth, Conrad Barsk's "Land of Lisp": http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/dfpmq/no_starch_press_releases_a_sample_chapter_from/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/dfpmq/no_starch_press_...
- lukev 16y ago
  It does indeed look like a great book - but it doesn't really change the fact that Common Lisp is fragmented and dated.
  - lispm 16y ago
    Really, LispWorks has its IDE ported to GTK+ and looks very nice under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/FreeBSD. Got concurrency, too. I'm also looking forward to see the ARM port of Clozure CL mature with the alpha version already running on an iPad.
    - lukev 16y ago
      But the mere fact that you actually need to point out that it (can) have basic cross platform compatibility and concurrency is proof that it's getting dated. Modern languages assume that. And that's only in the commercial implementation.
      - lispm 16y ago
        If you compare the features of LispWorks or Allegro CL with Clojure you will find that Clojure has a very long way to go to match those offerings. Clojure 1.2 can't even display errors without exposing its Java nature. For a start it lacks the error handling infrastructure of Common Lisp and the tools that implementations provided on top of that. No, concurrency is also supported by free CL implementations - like CCL.
        lukev 16y ago
        I fully admit that Clojure tooling isn't where it should be, yet. But it will be. But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. That should give CL advocates pause. As for running on Java, yeah, that's part of what it (currently) is. It's a strength and a weakness at the same time. Once Clojure becomes self-compiling, we might see that change. I'm actually working on a toy Clojure->LLVM compiler for my own education. There are enough people who love Clojure but have a distaste for Java that I expect we'll see a native version of Clojure in the next few years.
        fogus 16y ago
        > But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. That should give CL advocates pause. This is very fuzzy terminology. What defines newbie-friendly? I can get an "enterprise-quality" Common Lisp environment and language for free. Likewise, the CL standard is also freely available and meticulously cross-indexed. As an added bonus there are countless Common Lisp books available on every imaginable topic. There are also numerous package managers (including the exciting http://quicklisp.org http://quicklisp.org) at my disposal. And for the cherry on top there are luminaries like Ranier Joswig and Xach Beane willing to take their free time to answer my idiotic questions. This, to me, is the very definition of newbie-friendly.
        Xurinos 16y ago
        > But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. As a newbie, I have to disagree. Clojure has a ton of syntax to get used to, and to make it useful, you have to learn all the neat Java libraries on top of it. I found more resources and nice explanations for aspects of CL, and when I compare it against Clojure, I find I miss a lot of the nice functions and tools for CL. Here is a fun newbie point on it: In the first hour of playing with CL, I learned how to debug it. Not so with Clojure. Trace? Step? Maybe I should be using harder-to-find online tutorials for Clojure? Anyway, it boils down to opinion as to what is "easier". I was looking for something with batteries included that would compile to a distributable executable and be super flexible; CL fit the bill with the sbcl implementation. It successfully pulled me away from other fun languages, like Erlang.
    - bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
      We need not guess -- these things can be measured. Here is a graph with a language people will pick up and use, versus one they will not. http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby%2C+lisp http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby%2C+lisp

by lukev 16y ago

mahmud 16y ago

Hopefully, no one will read the cutest programming book since Starting Forth, Conrad Barsk's "Land of Lisp": http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/dfpmq/no_starch_press_releases_a_sample_chapter_from/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/dfpmq/no_starch_press_...

lukev 16y ago
It does indeed look like a great book - but it doesn't really change the fact that Common Lisp is fragmented and dated.
- lispm 16y ago
  Really, LispWorks has its IDE ported to GTK+ and looks very nice under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/FreeBSD. Got concurrency, too. I'm also looking forward to see the ARM port of Clozure CL mature with the alpha version already running on an iPad.
  - lukev 16y ago
    But the mere fact that you actually need to point out that it (can) have basic cross platform compatibility and concurrency is proof that it's getting dated. Modern languages assume that. And that's only in the commercial implementation.
    - lispm 16y ago
      If you compare the features of LispWorks or Allegro CL with Clojure you will find that Clojure has a very long way to go to match those offerings. Clojure 1.2 can't even display errors without exposing its Java nature. For a start it lacks the error handling infrastructure of Common Lisp and the tools that implementations provided on top of that. No, concurrency is also supported by free CL implementations - like CCL.
      - lukev 16y ago
        I fully admit that Clojure tooling isn't where it should be, yet. But it will be. But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. That should give CL advocates pause. As for running on Java, yeah, that's part of what it (currently) is. It's a strength and a weakness at the same time. Once Clojure becomes self-compiling, we might see that change. I'm actually working on a toy Clojure->LLVM compiler for my own education. There are enough people who love Clojure but have a distaste for Java that I expect we'll see a native version of Clojure in the next few years.
        fogus 16y ago
        > But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. That should give CL advocates pause. This is very fuzzy terminology. What defines newbie-friendly? I can get an "enterprise-quality" Common Lisp environment and language for free. Likewise, the CL standard is also freely available and meticulously cross-indexed. As an added bonus there are countless Common Lisp books available on every imaginable topic. There are also numerous package managers (including the exciting http://quicklisp.org http://quicklisp.org) at my disposal. And for the cherry on top there are luminaries like Ranier Joswig and Xach Beane willing to take their free time to answer my idiotic questions. This, to me, is the very definition of newbie-friendly.
        Xurinos 16y ago
        > But the fact is that despite its lack of mature tools, Clojure is more newbie-friendly than CL. As a newbie, I have to disagree. Clojure has a ton of syntax to get used to, and to make it useful, you have to learn all the neat Java libraries on top of it. I found more resources and nice explanations for aspects of CL, and when I compare it against Clojure, I find I miss a lot of the nice functions and tools for CL. Here is a fun newbie point on it: In the first hour of playing with CL, I learned how to debug it. Not so with Clojure. Trace? Step? Maybe I should be using harder-to-find online tutorials for Clojure? Anyway, it boils down to opinion as to what is "easier". I was looking for something with batteries included that would compile to a distributable executable and be super flexible; CL fit the bill with the sbcl implementation. It successfully pulled me away from other fun languages, like Erlang.
  - bluesnowmonkey 16y ago
    We need not guess -- these things can be measured. Here is a graph with a language people will pick up and use, versus one they will not. http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby%2C+lisp http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ruby%2C+lisp