4 ms·

Most of us are not Ents. We don't have decades to wait and see how a language feature "plays out". Rather, most of us have projects that we need to work on NOW,

Most of us are not Ents. We don't have decades to wait and see how a language feature "plays out". Rather, most of us have projects that we need to work on NOW, and if a language comes along with features that help us solve hard problems, it would be a good idea to take advantage of it. Who cares if "the greater Lisp community" will approve of it or not? (By the way, "Lisp community" is a bit of an oxymoron, IMHO; everyone seems to be stuck on his own island.)

RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Lisp Archipelago?
lispm 16y ago
I would also not care. If people like Clojure and its Java integration? So what? More power to them. Rich and his friends are doing a good job. Still there are enough people to prefer other Lisps - enough that ten Common Lisp implementations are maintained, twenty Schemes, many versions of Logo, ...
mfukar 16y ago
Indeed, there is no Lisp community. The fragmentation was enough for me to lose interest in the language and several of its dialects (heavily influenced my switch from emacs to vim, too :(), as well as functional programming in general. I wish the Lisp crowd (?) would seriously reconsider their views on matters like this.
- lispm 16y ago
  So you lost interest in Linux as well? There are probably more different Linux distributions than Lisp dialects. Which shell do you use? How about a C like language? C? Why not C++? Or D? ATS? You've decided on a scripting language? TCL? Perl? Rebol? Python? Ruby?
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    Perl, Python and Ruby all have outstanding communities. Would you care to argue that the Lisp community is better than any of these?
    - lispm 16y ago
      No, I was just say that you have to make a choice. Since Perl, Ruby and Python are all completely incompatible and share no code. You can look at Lisp and choose Racket and be happy, for example.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      Yes, I would argue. It's refreshing to drop in #lisp and ask any technical question, of whatever magnitude, and get answers immediately. I recommend that place to any intelligent students, researchers, language weenies, compiler hackers and system engineers. Just be informed and don't ask opinionated, loaded questions. Elsewhere? meh, I am left to think my present company has just been introduced to computing by its $LANG_MANUAL. There is also a lot of childish fucking around and casual piss-taking that doesn't happen among Lispers. If you expect an standing ovation because you pushed something to github, fuggedaboutit. No one will be retweeting wisdom, no one will like you on facebook, you will not be blogged about .. Ever wonder why Lispers, and most adult programming communities don't have "Rock Star" celeb provocateurs?
      - randallsquared 16y ago
        There is also a lot of childish fucking around and casual piss-taking that doesn't happen among Lispers. Maybe not anymore, but that stuff used to happen very regularly on comp.lang.lisp during the years I paid attention to it (2003ish through 2006ish, maybe).
        mahmud 16y ago
        CLL is the elephant graveyard of Lispers. It's where old hackers go to die. It's a messy place to be, but there are some ivory treasures to dig up.
      - 16y ago
  - mfukar 16y ago
    You try to make interesting points, but let me give you some indicative examples: - C has a very strong community, and people who don't like C go out there and create their own dialects or substitutes (like Go) without constantly harassing on each other. I won't go as far as saying nobody would insult me there as you're doing here, but at least there's some mutual respect that is driven by the interest for the language. The same could be said for the Python or Ruby (and no, I haven't decided and I won't, I use the right tool for the job) communities, but I have not had that experience with Lisp/Clojure/Scheme fans. - The various communities around Linux distributions similarly bash on each other, but thankfully I'm not in as much of a loss there as I were back in high school with no clue about what Lisp even was. I can safely ignore their rants because in that context, I can judge for myself. When it comes to Lisp dialects, I don't know my way around and the community made it hard for me to learn anything concrete. See, in many a case, it is difficult to get into a discussion without encountering some bizarre religious argument about "which shell do you use" or "why not C++?", similar to several recurring themes here in HN (see the recent "C is a macro assembler" arguments). Not only are such arguments unhelpful, but they're a waste of time for anyone who wants to delve into a subject. While the above may be anecdotal evidence drawn from personal experience, I see others share my view, and I don't believe in coincidence.
    - lispm 16y ago
      Let me make that clear: I like Common Lisp and use it. I'm not a Clojure user. But I also think Rich does an excellent job and his work on Clojure is brilliant. It's just that it is not exactly for me. If you look around in the Lisp community there are very very few people who don't have a lot of respect for Clojure.
rbanffy 16y ago
> We don't have decades to wait and see how a language feature "plays out" I think the difference of perspective comes from the different nature of the work Lisp is being used for. If your job is to create the next version of Lisp, it makes sense to watch how that new feature of Clojure plays out. On the other hand, if your job is to deliver a nice application to users who need it, you don't really care about how that feature will look 20 years from now - you use it if it makes your problem simpler to solve. That said, I wish application developers were less susceptible to language/library/framework fashion. I dread to support (and enhance) Java apps that rely on a stack of frameworks like the developers were playing some buzzword bingo game with the product.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

Lisp Archipelago?

lispm 16y ago

I would also not care. If people like Clojure and its Java integration? So what? More power to them. Rich and his friends are doing a good job. Still there are enough people to prefer other Lisps - enough that ten Common Lisp implementations are maintained, twenty Schemes, many versions of Logo, ...

mfukar 16y ago

Indeed, there is no Lisp community. The fragmentation was enough for me to lose interest in the language and several of its dialects (heavily influenced my switch from emacs to vim, too :(), as well as functional programming in general. I wish the Lisp crowd (?) would seriously reconsider their views on matters like this.

lispm 16y ago
So you lost interest in Linux as well? There are probably more different Linux distributions than Lisp dialects. Which shell do you use? How about a C like language? C? Why not C++? Or D? ATS? You've decided on a scripting language? TCL? Perl? Rebol? Python? Ruby?
- jimbokun 16y ago
  Perl, Python and Ruby all have outstanding communities. Would you care to argue that the Lisp community is better than any of these?
  - lispm 16y ago
    No, I was just say that you have to make a choice. Since Perl, Ruby and Python are all completely incompatible and share no code. You can look at Lisp and choose Racket and be happy, for example.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Yes, I would argue. It's refreshing to drop in #lisp and ask any technical question, of whatever magnitude, and get answers immediately. I recommend that place to any intelligent students, researchers, language weenies, compiler hackers and system engineers. Just be informed and don't ask opinionated, loaded questions. Elsewhere? meh, I am left to think my present company has just been introduced to computing by its $LANG_MANUAL. There is also a lot of childish fucking around and casual piss-taking that doesn't happen among Lispers. If you expect an standing ovation because you pushed something to github, fuggedaboutit. No one will be retweeting wisdom, no one will like you on facebook, you will not be blogged about .. Ever wonder why Lispers, and most adult programming communities don't have "Rock Star" celeb provocateurs?
    - randallsquared 16y ago
      There is also a lot of childish fucking around and casual piss-taking that doesn't happen among Lispers. Maybe not anymore, but that stuff used to happen very regularly on comp.lang.lisp during the years I paid attention to it (2003ish through 2006ish, maybe).
      - mahmud 16y ago
        CLL is the elephant graveyard of Lispers. It's where old hackers go to die. It's a messy place to be, but there are some ivory treasures to dig up.
    - 16y ago
- mfukar 16y ago
  You try to make interesting points, but let me give you some indicative examples: - C has a very strong community, and people who don't like C go out there and create their own dialects or substitutes (like Go) without constantly harassing on each other. I won't go as far as saying nobody would insult me there as you're doing here, but at least there's some mutual respect that is driven by the interest for the language. The same could be said for the Python or Ruby (and no, I haven't decided and I won't, I use the right tool for the job) communities, but I have not had that experience with Lisp/Clojure/Scheme fans. - The various communities around Linux distributions similarly bash on each other, but thankfully I'm not in as much of a loss there as I were back in high school with no clue about what Lisp even was. I can safely ignore their rants because in that context, I can judge for myself. When it comes to Lisp dialects, I don't know my way around and the community made it hard for me to learn anything concrete. See, in many a case, it is difficult to get into a discussion without encountering some bizarre religious argument about "which shell do you use" or "why not C++?", similar to several recurring themes here in HN (see the recent "C is a macro assembler" arguments). Not only are such arguments unhelpful, but they're a waste of time for anyone who wants to delve into a subject. While the above may be anecdotal evidence drawn from personal experience, I see others share my view, and I don't believe in coincidence.
  - lispm 16y ago
    Let me make that clear: I like Common Lisp and use it. I'm not a Clojure user. But I also think Rich does an excellent job and his work on Clojure is brilliant. It's just that it is not exactly for me. If you look around in the Lisp community there are very very few people who don't have a lot of respect for Clojure.

rbanffy 16y ago

> We don't have decades to wait and see how a language feature "plays out" I think the difference of perspective comes from the different nature of the work Lisp is being used for. If your job is to create the next version of Lisp, it makes sense to watch how that new feature of Clojure plays out. On the other hand, if your job is to deliver a nice application to users who need it, you don't really care about how that feature will look 20 years from now - you use it if it makes your problem simpler to solve. That said, I wish application developers were less susceptible to language/library/framework fashion. I dread to support (and enhance) Java apps that rely on a stack of frameworks like the developers were playing some buzzword bingo game with the product.