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One of the key selling points of lisp is that it allows you to easily build a language that more closely maps to the problem you're trying to solve. In the 197
by oddity 7y ago
One of the key selling points of lisp is that it allows you to easily build a language that more closely maps to the problem you're trying to solve. In the 1970s, this was powerful because parsing was an active area of research.
Today, parsing is one of the least interesting problems in language design (unless you're C++ or based on natural language). Most of the effort of spinning up a new language is in the backend (optimization and error checking), where lisp doesn't offer a compelling advantage (well, writing folding rules in C is a total pain, but this is a recursive problem... I can just write a code generator).
- maliker 7y agoSo maybe other languages have finally beat lisp at its own game? Makes sense from the wave of functional language features becoming popular in the 2010s.
- oddity 7y agoIt's not necessarily that they beat lisp at its own game. I still think the tight integration story of lisp is unmatched nearly anywhere else, but, when viewed holistically, lisp's advantages have become less compelling over time for people who have already written software outside of the ecosystem. It suffers from a lot of the same problems as smalltalk.
- _pmf_ 7y ago> Most of the effort of spinning up a new language is in the backend (optimization and error checking), where lisp doesn't offer a compelling advantage SBCL literally allows writing compiler intrinsics (and I'm talking about native machine code, not bytecode) at runtime out of the box: https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/03/15/sbcl-the-ultimate-assembly-code-breadboard/ https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/03/15/sbcl-the-ultimate-assembl...