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Even though I always wanted to learn some ruby, I never made it through any short tutorial. My problem is: I already _know_ that LISP is the best language(-fam

Even though I always wanted to learn some ruby, I never made it through any short tutorial. My problem is: I already _know_ that LISP is the best language(-family) ever and probably nothing in future will change that. And meanwhile I accepted python for daily use because it has so many libraries.

machiaweliczny 8y ago
LISP is maybe expressive and composable language but "best" depends on usecase. From my understanding due to runtime code generation possibility it's hard to "read" (analyse control flow). When code is hard to read then it's also hard to cooperate. That's probably a reason why LISP isn't more popular. Ruby shares some of these issues due to too much runtime ability. It's maybe nice to use and beautifull from the outside but too messy inside and you can't really rely on it. Kinda like a cheap girl :P What you know LISP is best for?
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Being a Ruby that AOT compiles to native code and has very nice IDE tooling experience.
- lucidstack 8y ago
  > Kinda like a cheap girl :P Wow, nice use of sexism to annihilate any quality that could be attributed to your comment. Please don’t.
  - machiaweliczny 8y ago
    Sorry for that. Couldn't resist sharp metaphor.
em-bee 8y ago
after learning common lisp and smalltalk i realized that almost none of the languages that were created after added anything new to the language. this doesn't make lisp the best language, but certainly one that's good enough, and the only thing holding it back today is lack of popularity, not lack of ability. i feel that newer languages add a more complex syntax without necessarily simplifying the the process. though here i feel that ruby and python have a rather nice syntax, and it's debatable which is actually easier to read. for my part, i like the minimalistic syntax of either lisp or smalltalk, because they make it easier to reason about the code once you get used to it because there are not so many syntactic elements that i need to keep track of. but both do take some getting used to. maybe ruby and python today feel easier to pick up because we start learning with rather complex syntax.
- em-bee 8y ago
  a good comparison may be lego bricks. lisp and smalltalk syntax is like the basic bricks that can be used anywhere, whereas ruby, python and others have additional special parts that only have a single use. while the basic bricks are much easier to understand, maybe it does take more skill to use them to build complex systems than if you have a lot of specialized parts...

machiaweliczny 8y ago

LISP is maybe expressive and composable language but "best" depends on usecase. From my understanding due to runtime code generation possibility it's hard to "read" (analyse control flow). When code is hard to read then it's also hard to cooperate. That's probably a reason why LISP isn't more popular. Ruby shares some of these issues due to too much runtime ability. It's maybe nice to use and beautifull from the outside but too messy inside and you can't really rely on it. Kinda like a cheap girl :P What you know LISP is best for?

pjmlp 8y ago
Being a Ruby that AOT compiles to native code and has very nice IDE tooling experience.
lucidstack 8y ago
> Kinda like a cheap girl :P Wow, nice use of sexism to annihilate any quality that could be attributed to your comment. Please don’t.
- machiaweliczny 8y ago
  Sorry for that. Couldn't resist sharp metaphor.

em-bee 8y ago

after learning common lisp and smalltalk i realized that almost none of the languages that were created after added anything new to the language. this doesn't make lisp the best language, but certainly one that's good enough, and the only thing holding it back today is lack of popularity, not lack of ability. i feel that newer languages add a more complex syntax without necessarily simplifying the the process. though here i feel that ruby and python have a rather nice syntax, and it's debatable which is actually easier to read. for my part, i like the minimalistic syntax of either lisp or smalltalk, because they make it easier to reason about the code once you get used to it because there are not so many syntactic elements that i need to keep track of. but both do take some getting used to. maybe ruby and python today feel easier to pick up because we start learning with rather complex syntax.

em-bee 8y ago
a good comparison may be lego bricks. lisp and smalltalk syntax is like the basic bricks that can be used anywhere, whereas ruby, python and others have additional special parts that only have a single use. while the basic bricks are much easier to understand, maybe it does take more skill to use them to build complex systems than if you have a lot of specialized parts...