5 ms·

Re statically typed Lisp, I’m keeping an eye on Carp [1] which seems to be a quite active project. [1] https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp https://github.com/car

Re statically typed Lisp, I’m keeping an eye on Carp [1] which seems to be a quite active project. [1] https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp

simias 7y ago
Common lisp meets Rust, I'm intrigued. All these new exciting programming languages over the past ~5 years or so are quit exciting. I'm starting to believe that in the not so far future we'll look back on that time period between the late 90s up to the mid 2010s as some kind of a dark age for programming, where we kept using those inelegant, inefficient, hacky languages carried by Moore's law and an incredible demand for new software being written in huge quantity extremely fast, quality be damned. Now that the gold rush starts to cool down there seem to be a lot of very interesting work to take a few steps back and do it right.
- neilv 7y ago
  I think your dark age and gold rush theory has some truth to it. The whole industry culture and practices changed during that period, but we're starting to see things like people interested in Rust, even though it's not pitched as a faster way to make slicker generic Web sites and phone apps. I'm also hoping that Racket (which is is like a secret oasis community) will get more attention, and someone will dust off some old Paul Graham writings about startups and Lisp, and some startups (probably ones who're not just doing another cookie-cutter madlibs startup) will decide to use Racket initially. (Disclosure: I have an interest in promoting Racket, because I'd love to help build startups in Racket, and also recruit top programmers with Racket as a carrot.)
  - andrenth 7y ago
    What do you think are good learning resources for learning racket for an experienced (functional) programmer? Is there a book that isn’t focused on learning to program?
    - nextos 7y ago
      Are you experienced in Common Lisp? Racket is multiparadigm too. As such, many good multiparadigm books will be of great help. E.g. SICP, but also the much less known yet equally fantastic CTM. None are written in Racket, although SICP with Scheme is close, but many concepts can be ported. There's also excellent Lisp literature like Lisp in Small Pieces or PAIP, that are always worth to consider. Racket also implements most of http://www.eopl3.com/ http://www.eopl3.com/, which is a great textbook.
      - andrenth 7y ago
        Thanks. I don’t know Common Lisp, but I guess the knowledge will be transferable.
        amirouche 7y ago
        quick read https://github.com/a-guile-mind/book/#a-guile-mind-book https://github.com/a-guile-mind/book/#a-guile-mind-book
      - neilv 7y ago
        For working through SICP, you can actually use the Racket tools, like the DrRacket IDE. We rigged up a simple `#lang sicp` that emulates the version of MIT Scheme used for SICP problem sets: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
    - neilv 7y ago
      For an FP person, you might want to instead start with skimming, for half an hour, the R5RS or R7RS Scheme paper, for the base language from which Racket grew (don't worry about the first-class continuations unless you want to). Then go to the Racket Guide or Racket Reference table of contents, to look for things that you might be looking for from your past FP experience, like `match` (though it's maybe not used as much as you're familiar with). Then look into some of the strengths of Racket, like syntax extension and `#lang`. (If you want additional treatment of syntax extension and `#lang`, see things like Hendershott's "Fear of Macros", and Butterick's book.) Also skim the large list of add-on packages, to get a sense of what's there. Eventually read through the Guide and Reference at your leisure. There's an imposing wall of manuals at: https://docs.racket-lang.org/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/ Racket isn't purely FP, but it can be used that way, even with the base language. There's also at least one lazy `#lang`, and you can make more.
  - nextos 7y ago
    I am planning to kick off a biotech startup this Fall around a great idea / discovery, and it will be done in Lisp. Probably in Racket. I already received some cool VC funding offers. I'm evaluating them, and planning stuff. For my use case, Racket is perfect, so it has big chances.
    - neilv 7y ago
      As you're looking for co-founders and/or early hires or consultants, definitely post to the `racket-users` email list (currently also a Google Group), which is the most canonical forum for Racket. And feel encouraged to email me directly. I might be available then myself, and, if I can get some understanding of your needs, I might also know some other good candidates.
      - nextos 7y ago
        I will do both things, thanks for the tips!
  - ajudson 7y ago
    What development tooling do you use for Racket? I tried Dr. Racket and it felt pretty janky compared to SLIME for CL.
    - milemi 7y ago
      Try this https://www.racket-mode.com/ https://www.racket-mode.com/
- andrenth 7y ago
  After working a lot with statically typed languages, I’ve been doing some work recently with a dynamic language, and it feels refreshingly fun... Granted, I’ve been using elixir and erlang, where the use of pattern matching matching and immutability give you a lot of the benefits that modern static languages have, but I wouldn’t mind a new wave of modern dynamic languages, or at least static ones that feel more dynamic (Carp may fit in that spot).
  - deepaksurti 7y ago
    If you haven't looked at it, then (lisp (flavoured (Erlang))) will appeal to you. [1] [1] http://lfe.io http://lfe.io
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Research languages like Mesa/Cedar or Modula-3. We had a dark age of too much VM and scripting languages, and only now getting back how computing could have looked like. For example, given Anders background imagine how .NET would have been if it was fully AOT compiled and the same low level features from Delphi since version 1.0. Or if C++ Builder wasn't the only surviving example to RAD development with C++, before others started to build on top of LLVM toolchain.
jakeogh 7y ago
Another is clasp https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp There are a few interesting talks on yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Oh man this is going to be a fun naming conflict to resolve... https://github.com/google/clasp https://github.com/google/clasp
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
dannyobrien 7y ago
There’s also Coalton — a typed implementation within Common Lisp https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton/ https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton/

Re statically typed Lisp, I’m keeping an eye on Carp [1] which seems to be a quite active project. [1] https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp

simias 7y ago

Common lisp meets Rust, I'm intrigued. All these new exciting programming languages over the past ~5 years or so are quit exciting. I'm starting to believe that in the not so far future we'll look back on that time period between the late 90s up to the mid 2010s as some kind of a dark age for programming, where we kept using those inelegant, inefficient, hacky languages carried by Moore's law and an incredible demand for new software being written in huge quantity extremely fast, quality be damned. Now that the gold rush starts to cool down there seem to be a lot of very interesting work to take a few steps back and do it right.

neilv 7y ago
I think your dark age and gold rush theory has some truth to it. The whole industry culture and practices changed during that period, but we're starting to see things like people interested in Rust, even though it's not pitched as a faster way to make slicker generic Web sites and phone apps. I'm also hoping that Racket (which is is like a secret oasis community) will get more attention, and someone will dust off some old Paul Graham writings about startups and Lisp, and some startups (probably ones who're not just doing another cookie-cutter madlibs startup) will decide to use Racket initially. (Disclosure: I have an interest in promoting Racket, because I'd love to help build startups in Racket, and also recruit top programmers with Racket as a carrot.)
- andrenth 7y ago
  What do you think are good learning resources for learning racket for an experienced (functional) programmer? Is there a book that isn’t focused on learning to program?
  - nextos 7y ago
    Are you experienced in Common Lisp? Racket is multiparadigm too. As such, many good multiparadigm books will be of great help. E.g. SICP, but also the much less known yet equally fantastic CTM. None are written in Racket, although SICP with Scheme is close, but many concepts can be ported. There's also excellent Lisp literature like Lisp in Small Pieces or PAIP, that are always worth to consider. Racket also implements most of http://www.eopl3.com/ http://www.eopl3.com/, which is a great textbook.
    - andrenth 7y ago
      Thanks. I don’t know Common Lisp, but I guess the knowledge will be transferable.
      - amirouche 7y ago
        quick read https://github.com/a-guile-mind/book/#a-guile-mind-book https://github.com/a-guile-mind/book/#a-guile-mind-book
    - neilv 7y ago
      For working through SICP, you can actually use the Racket tools, like the DrRacket IDE. We rigged up a simple `#lang sicp` that emulates the version of MIT Scheme used for SICP problem sets: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
  - neilv 7y ago
    For an FP person, you might want to instead start with skimming, for half an hour, the R5RS or R7RS Scheme paper, for the base language from which Racket grew (don't worry about the first-class continuations unless you want to). Then go to the Racket Guide or Racket Reference table of contents, to look for things that you might be looking for from your past FP experience, like `match` (though it's maybe not used as much as you're familiar with). Then look into some of the strengths of Racket, like syntax extension and `#lang`. (If you want additional treatment of syntax extension and `#lang`, see things like Hendershott's "Fear of Macros", and Butterick's book.) Also skim the large list of add-on packages, to get a sense of what's there. Eventually read through the Guide and Reference at your leisure. There's an imposing wall of manuals at: https://docs.racket-lang.org/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/ Racket isn't purely FP, but it can be used that way, even with the base language. There's also at least one lazy `#lang`, and you can make more.
- nextos 7y ago
  I am planning to kick off a biotech startup this Fall around a great idea / discovery, and it will be done in Lisp. Probably in Racket. I already received some cool VC funding offers. I'm evaluating them, and planning stuff. For my use case, Racket is perfect, so it has big chances.
  - neilv 7y ago
    As you're looking for co-founders and/or early hires or consultants, definitely post to the `racket-users` email list (currently also a Google Group), which is the most canonical forum for Racket. And feel encouraged to email me directly. I might be available then myself, and, if I can get some understanding of your needs, I might also know some other good candidates.
    - nextos 7y ago
      I will do both things, thanks for the tips!
- ajudson 7y ago
  What development tooling do you use for Racket? I tried Dr. Racket and it felt pretty janky compared to SLIME for CL.
  - milemi 7y ago
    Try this https://www.racket-mode.com/ https://www.racket-mode.com/
andrenth 7y ago
After working a lot with statically typed languages, I’ve been doing some work recently with a dynamic language, and it feels refreshingly fun... Granted, I’ve been using elixir and erlang, where the use of pattern matching matching and immutability give you a lot of the benefits that modern static languages have, but I wouldn’t mind a new wave of modern dynamic languages, or at least static ones that feel more dynamic (Carp may fit in that spot).
- deepaksurti 7y ago
  If you haven't looked at it, then (lisp (flavoured (Erlang))) will appeal to you. [1] [1] http://lfe.io http://lfe.io
pjmlp 7y ago
Research languages like Mesa/Cedar or Modula-3. We had a dark age of too much VM and scripting languages, and only now getting back how computing could have looked like. For example, given Anders background imagine how .NET would have been if it was fully AOT compiled and the same low level features from Delphi since version 1.0. Or if C++ Builder wasn't the only surviving example to RAD development with C++, before others started to build on top of LLVM toolchain.

jakeogh 7y ago

Another is clasp https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp There are a few interesting talks on yt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdXeRBbgDM

mehrdadn 7y ago
Oh man this is going to be a fun naming conflict to resolve... https://github.com/google/clasp https://github.com/google/clasp
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

dannyobrien 7y ago

There’s also Coalton — a typed implementation within Common Lisp https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton/ https://github.com/stylewarning/coalton/