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TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now ver

by Markku 16y ago

TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now very productive and happy using them. TLDR TLDR Libraries make a big difference!

ubernostrum 16y ago
Honestly, I'll probably get crucified for this, but: tl;dr it's possible to be a Blub programmer in Lisp.
- Markku 16y ago
  If we consider libraries part of the language, then I would say yes. All lisp implementations lack something for someone. And a language with great libraries may appear to be higher than others in some perspective because they offer a set of great existing tools. As far as limiting your thinking, Lisp in itself does no such thing, the libraries do it. As a thought, I have sometimes wondered, why is it difficult for me to do something in Racket? It is not because a library is missing (though it could happen), but because it does not limit me. So it does not guide my thinking as much as let's say a strict language like Java. When I don't have to think about classes with single inheritance and single-dispatch methods, I start to think about class systems, generic methods, multiple dispatch, may ditch classes altogether, go to a great unified graph of data or something crazier. I end up thinking how I should be modeling something and not doing the modeling itself. It does go overboard sometimes :) Does anybody else face this problem?
  - nickik 16y ago
    You have the typicall overthinking problem. You should just start to write useful functions and then when you really see a need for something like multiple dispatch you have it at hand to solve your problem. This way your System will grow into what you want you don't have to design everything upfront thats the wrong we to go about it. (Design is fine but on a much higher level then the object system in your language)
    - Markku 16y ago
      Yes can be. My typical approach is to write down what I want to say in an as idiomatic way as I can. Then I go on to implement the notation that I have come up with. The code I write is usually very high-level code. It can be written like an acceptance test or feature test. I essentially try to model the business domain of the software as cleanly as possible. I might refactor the code until I can express the domain clearly, with DRY etc. Implementing all the bits of my DSL is often then the actual problem. Often I meet areas of the domain that are tricky because I have never solved such problems before. I think only my the third implementation of some idea can be something usable. So sometimes it takes a long time to get there! :) This is only a problem in my personal projects because, well, the main goal is to advance my capabilities and thinking and finishing the project is secondary.
      - nickik 16y ago
        It could be that you have trouble think about these concepts but come up with good solutions in the end. Know that you have these features how would it feel to go back to Java. Then you think something like ok I would implement this with a multimethod and then you can start look for a complicated and ugly designpattern do mimic something like a multimethod.
  - riffraff 16y ago
    > As far as limiting your thinking, Lisp in itself does no such thing, the libraries do it. Isn't this BLUB at it's finest? I can't think of X in context Y, so X is unthinkable, thus Y allows me to think of everything.
- kaffiene 16y ago
  Un-possible. PG said so and PG's word is Gospel on HN
Markku 16y ago
To add some detail. Programming languages live and die by their libraries, i.e. vocabulary. The differences in grammar are in my opinion rather small, when we talk about how expressive a clever programmer can be. Can a person be even more expressive in Lisp? Perhaps but it's not essential. The library support on the other hand is essential. You want to stand on the shoulders of giants for the next step. In all modern languages you can write elaborate, expressive libraries (read DSLs) for your pet problems. I think my TLDR summarizes the original author's post but if someone disagrees, then we can have a fruitful discussion :) Disclaimer I use Java and Racket daily.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I actually don't think that's the point of the article - it may be true, but it's not supported by the text or background story. This was written in 2002, and the author's tenure at Google was 2000-2001. That was pre-BigTable, I think it was pre-MapReduce, and it may even have been pre-GFS. Plus, Google's known for it's NIH syndrome - while there are a fair number of third-party libraries in use now, there weren't really in Google's codebase of 2000, which had just dumped many of the early frameworks they'd used for prototypes. Rather, I think this is more evidence of the old "Good programmers will be productive in any language." The advantage that an expressive programming language like Lisp gives you is that it frees you to think about the problem domain and not worry too much about the details of the machine. However, if you're skilled enough that you've pushed those details into unconscious muscle memory, they don't matter anyway. And a language like C++ gives you the option of dropping down to the bare metal if the need arises. There are a fair number of Lispisms in early Google code - MapReduce is the obvious one, and there're others that I'm not at liberty to discuss. However, they're Lispisms implemented in C++, where the author took the concept and transplanted them into a language that could give the efficiency needed. This is not a bad strategy - when you understand the concept fully, you're free to tweak it and adapt it exactly as necessary for your problem. Perhaps not coincidentally, many early Googlers were also programming language & compiler guys before Google. Urs Hoezle (employee #9 and Google's first VP) had previously done StrongTalk (statically-typed SmallTalk), Self (the prototypical prototype-based language and an early inspiration for JavaScript), and the VM that later became Java HotSpot. Jeff Dean got his Ph.D on the Cecil/Vortex compiler, one of the first optimized implementations of CLOS-like multimethods. Rob Pike worked on Plan9 at Bell Labs and invented the Limbo programming language as part of it.

by Markku 16y ago

ubernostrum 16y ago

Honestly, I'll probably get crucified for this, but: tl;dr it's possible to be a Blub programmer in Lisp.

Markku 16y ago
If we consider libraries part of the language, then I would say yes. All lisp implementations lack something for someone. And a language with great libraries may appear to be higher than others in some perspective because they offer a set of great existing tools. As far as limiting your thinking, Lisp in itself does no such thing, the libraries do it. As a thought, I have sometimes wondered, why is it difficult for me to do something in Racket? It is not because a library is missing (though it could happen), but because it does not limit me. So it does not guide my thinking as much as let's say a strict language like Java. When I don't have to think about classes with single inheritance and single-dispatch methods, I start to think about class systems, generic methods, multiple dispatch, may ditch classes altogether, go to a great unified graph of data or something crazier. I end up thinking how I should be modeling something and not doing the modeling itself. It does go overboard sometimes :) Does anybody else face this problem?
- nickik 16y ago
  You have the typicall overthinking problem. You should just start to write useful functions and then when you really see a need for something like multiple dispatch you have it at hand to solve your problem. This way your System will grow into what you want you don't have to design everything upfront thats the wrong we to go about it. (Design is fine but on a much higher level then the object system in your language)
  - Markku 16y ago
    Yes can be. My typical approach is to write down what I want to say in an as idiomatic way as I can. Then I go on to implement the notation that I have come up with. The code I write is usually very high-level code. It can be written like an acceptance test or feature test. I essentially try to model the business domain of the software as cleanly as possible. I might refactor the code until I can express the domain clearly, with DRY etc. Implementing all the bits of my DSL is often then the actual problem. Often I meet areas of the domain that are tricky because I have never solved such problems before. I think only my the third implementation of some idea can be something usable. So sometimes it takes a long time to get there! :) This is only a problem in my personal projects because, well, the main goal is to advance my capabilities and thinking and finishing the project is secondary.
    - nickik 16y ago
      It could be that you have trouble think about these concepts but come up with good solutions in the end. Know that you have these features how would it feel to go back to Java. Then you think something like ok I would implement this with a multimethod and then you can start look for a complicated and ugly designpattern do mimic something like a multimethod.
- riffraff 16y ago
  > As far as limiting your thinking, Lisp in itself does no such thing, the libraries do it. Isn't this BLUB at it's finest? I can't think of X in context Y, so X is unthinkable, thus Y allows me to think of everything.
kaffiene 16y ago
Un-possible. PG said so and PG's word is Gospel on HN

Markku 16y ago

To add some detail. Programming languages live and die by their libraries, i.e. vocabulary. The differences in grammar are in my opinion rather small, when we talk about how expressive a clever programmer can be. Can a person be even more expressive in Lisp? Perhaps but it's not essential. The library support on the other hand is essential. You want to stand on the shoulders of giants for the next step. In all modern languages you can write elaborate, expressive libraries (read DSLs) for your pet problems. I think my TLDR summarizes the original author's post but if someone disagrees, then we can have a fruitful discussion :) Disclaimer I use Java and Racket daily.

nostrademons 16y ago
I actually don't think that's the point of the article - it may be true, but it's not supported by the text or background story. This was written in 2002, and the author's tenure at Google was 2000-2001. That was pre-BigTable, I think it was pre-MapReduce, and it may even have been pre-GFS. Plus, Google's known for it's NIH syndrome - while there are a fair number of third-party libraries in use now, there weren't really in Google's codebase of 2000, which had just dumped many of the early frameworks they'd used for prototypes. Rather, I think this is more evidence of the old "Good programmers will be productive in any language." The advantage that an expressive programming language like Lisp gives you is that it frees you to think about the problem domain and not worry too much about the details of the machine. However, if you're skilled enough that you've pushed those details into unconscious muscle memory, they don't matter anyway. And a language like C++ gives you the option of dropping down to the bare metal if the need arises. There are a fair number of Lispisms in early Google code - MapReduce is the obvious one, and there're others that I'm not at liberty to discuss. However, they're Lispisms implemented in C++, where the author took the concept and transplanted them into a language that could give the efficiency needed. This is not a bad strategy - when you understand the concept fully, you're free to tweak it and adapt it exactly as necessary for your problem. Perhaps not coincidentally, many early Googlers were also programming language & compiler guys before Google. Urs Hoezle (employee #9 and Google's first VP) had previously done StrongTalk (statically-typed SmallTalk), Self (the prototypical prototype-based language and an early inspiration for JavaScript), and the VM that later became Java HotSpot. Jeff Dean got his Ph.D on the Cecil/Vortex compiler, one of the first optimized implementations of CLOS-like multimethods. Rob Pike worked on Plan9 at Bell Labs and invented the Limbo programming language as part of it.