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> Similarly, some pretty nifty stuff in libraries is possible due to the flexibility of these languages. You pay for that "flexibility" quite directly in lack

> Similarly, some pretty nifty stuff in libraries is possible due to the flexibility of these languages. You pay for that "flexibility" quite directly in lack of verifiability and of adequate performance. It's not a free lunch - if it was, we would all be using LISP anyway.

brlewis 8y ago
If those were the reasons for LISP's lack of popularity, then LISP would have been more popular than Python or PHP. What happened is that 1980s hardware was not ready for languages slower than C. C became the dominant language, and C-style syntax became the dominant syntax, with C++, Java and JavaScript following its lead. Eventually people adopted languages slower than C, but they didn't adopt paren-prefix notation.
- kazinator 8y ago
  People used slower-than-C languages throughout the 1980's and onward: for instance BASIC-s (eventually Microsoft's Visual Basic starting in 1991), Ashton-Tate's dBase and its derivatives ("xBase").
wutbrodo 8y ago
Yes, I didn't say it was a free lunch. The entirety of my comments here are about how there are pros and cons to every language that manifest in different situations, and things like "ability to go into ugly technical debt for short-term speed boost" being a pro has nothing to do with the claim that it's an unalloyed good, but there are situations that play to its strengths and weaknesses. I hate to be rude, but I'm really not sure how you thought I hadn't already made this point if you had read the thread we're on. If anything, my original comment comes close to saying that static typing is superior, period (though the same caveats apply about different situations requiring different sets of strength and weaknesses). The obvious example here is that I unquestionably do my personal scripting in Python instead of C++, despite very much enjoying engineering jobs in the latter to those in the former. Different situations, different requirements.

brlewis 8y ago

If those were the reasons for LISP's lack of popularity, then LISP would have been more popular than Python or PHP. What happened is that 1980s hardware was not ready for languages slower than C. C became the dominant language, and C-style syntax became the dominant syntax, with C++, Java and JavaScript following its lead. Eventually people adopted languages slower than C, but they didn't adopt paren-prefix notation.

kazinator 8y ago
People used slower-than-C languages throughout the 1980's and onward: for instance BASIC-s (eventually Microsoft's Visual Basic starting in 1991), Ashton-Tate's dBase and its derivatives ("xBase").

wutbrodo 8y ago

Yes, I didn't say it was a free lunch. The entirety of my comments here are about how there are pros and cons to every language that manifest in different situations, and things like "ability to go into ugly technical debt for short-term speed boost" being a pro has nothing to do with the claim that it's an unalloyed good, but there are situations that play to its strengths and weaknesses. I hate to be rude, but I'm really not sure how you thought I hadn't already made this point if you had read the thread we're on. If anything, my original comment comes close to saying that static typing is superior, period (though the same caveats apply about different situations requiring different sets of strength and weaknesses). The obvious example here is that I unquestionably do my personal scripting in Python instead of C++, despite very much enjoying engineering jobs in the latter to those in the former. Different situations, different requirements.