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This is a valid argument with several points worth discussing. To the people downvoting, that is not what downvoting is for.

alec 16y ago
It really isn't. Replace "Lisp" with "Perl" and "theoreticians" with something evocative of the stereotypical Perl programmer and you have the exact same nonsubstantive rant that adds little to the discussion of what a good programming language should look like or why a particular one is bad. I've been a "working programmer" who happens to write Common Lisp for a few years. Common Lisp is a programming language like any other: people who write good code in other languages can write good code in Common Lisp, and people who write bad code can make everyone's life just as miserable. Most time spent figuring out a new code base isn't the style or set of features used, it's figuring out the domain-specific logic. Macros aren't abused to any greater extent than C++'s operator<<, monkeypatching, or preprocessors. I am of the opinion that anyone who calls Common Lisp a "theoretically-pure" language has not done anything but a simple recursion exercise: features like loop's inability to detect sequence type, the difference between progn and prog1 in terms of multiple values, having functions like rplaca or caar, and mixing &optional with &key are not what I think of when I think elegant or "theoretically-pure". They're there because the designers were sometimes wrong and sometimes doing the best with what they had.
- derefr 16y ago
  > Common Lisp is a programming language like any other: people who write good code in other languages can write good code in Common Lisp, and people who write bad code can make everyone's life just as miserable. We're not talking about the extremes, here, though; we're talking about completely average code, written by completely average programmers, and the comparative number of extra milliseconds it takes these programmers to comprehend, or recall, the correct syntax in one language vs. another. Milliseconds matter; when Google shaves milliseconds off their page load times, they earn millions of dollars. This isn't because every user is slightly better off, but because some discrete number of users switched from "eh, this is taking too long, I'm outta here" to "alright, I'll put up with that." People get fed up with programming languages all the time, but no one bothers to find a formal reason for it. Has anyone ever done an eye-tracking study on people programming? > I am of the opinion that anyone who calls Common Lisp a "theoretically-pure" language No one's doing that. "Lisp" as a general term does not mean "Common Lisp"; it refers to the feature intersection of all popularly-implemented Lisps—the "Lisp" that Greenspun's rule refers to getting implemented everywhere. That "Lisp" is very pure.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    Greenspun's rule refers specifically to Common Lisp ("... of half of Common Lisp.") and there's no way that "half of Common Lisp", even with a healthy dose of hyperbole, can refer to the feature-intersection of all popularly-implemented Lisps, nor to anything "very pure".

alec 16y ago

It really isn't. Replace "Lisp" with "Perl" and "theoreticians" with something evocative of the stereotypical Perl programmer and you have the exact same nonsubstantive rant that adds little to the discussion of what a good programming language should look like or why a particular one is bad. I've been a "working programmer" who happens to write Common Lisp for a few years. Common Lisp is a programming language like any other: people who write good code in other languages can write good code in Common Lisp, and people who write bad code can make everyone's life just as miserable. Most time spent figuring out a new code base isn't the style or set of features used, it's figuring out the domain-specific logic. Macros aren't abused to any greater extent than C++'s operator<<, monkeypatching, or preprocessors. I am of the opinion that anyone who calls Common Lisp a "theoretically-pure" language has not done anything but a simple recursion exercise: features like loop's inability to detect sequence type, the difference between progn and prog1 in terms of multiple values, having functions like rplaca or caar, and mixing &optional with &key are not what I think of when I think elegant or "theoretically-pure". They're there because the designers were sometimes wrong and sometimes doing the best with what they had.

derefr 16y ago
> Common Lisp is a programming language like any other: people who write good code in other languages can write good code in Common Lisp, and people who write bad code can make everyone's life just as miserable. We're not talking about the extremes, here, though; we're talking about completely average code, written by completely average programmers, and the comparative number of extra milliseconds it takes these programmers to comprehend, or recall, the correct syntax in one language vs. another. Milliseconds matter; when Google shaves milliseconds off their page load times, they earn millions of dollars. This isn't because every user is slightly better off, but because some discrete number of users switched from "eh, this is taking too long, I'm outta here" to "alright, I'll put up with that." People get fed up with programming languages all the time, but no one bothers to find a formal reason for it. Has anyone ever done an eye-tracking study on people programming? > I am of the opinion that anyone who calls Common Lisp a "theoretically-pure" language No one's doing that. "Lisp" as a general term does not mean "Common Lisp"; it refers to the feature intersection of all popularly-implemented Lisps—the "Lisp" that Greenspun's rule refers to getting implemented everywhere. That "Lisp" is very pure.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Greenspun's rule refers specifically to Common Lisp ("... of half of Common Lisp.") and there's no way that "half of Common Lisp", even with a healthy dose of hyperbole, can refer to the feature-intersection of all popularly-implemented Lisps, nor to anything "very pure".