3 ms·

Does anyone know of a language like this? My first thought was that it would probably be something Lisp-y, but I realized I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a langu

Does anyone know of a language like this? My first thought was that it would probably be something Lisp-y, but I realized I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a language that was scaled to individual coders by design. Sounds like a really interesting way to consider how a programming language should make its compromises...

andrewflnr 6y ago
Something LISPy with optional typing would probably be about right. But I think the real obstacles are in the ecosystem. There was a hint about "idiosyncracies of Heroku and Twilio". Technology for quickly deploying applications and sending text messages all over the world exists multiple times over. Why does it still take so much effort to integrate them? Why is business logic such a small portion of our codebases, and duct-tape such a large portion? Part of it is plain inadequate industry experience in building high-powered abstractions, but also market forces and network effects.
bitwize 6y ago
> Does anyone know of a language like this? My first thought was that it would probably be something Lisp-y, but I realized I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a language that was scaled to individual coders by design. The Lisp Machines were designed to be individual workstations, in an era when virtually all computers were batch or time-shared machines. I remember seeing a video from Symbolics, the leading Lisp Machine vendor, from the late 80s. Some VP of product development was on the screen, and he was talking the usual business stuff: blah blah improve developer productivity, blah blah features, blah blah. Then he said something interesting, something I've never heard from a hardware or software executive: "We want to make it possible for a small team of developers to build large projects, and for a single person to build a smaller project." So the idea of an individual programmer or a small strike team being able to build software of virtually any size is very much part of the Lisp culture.
- lispm 6y ago
  > Lisp Machines were designed to be individual workstations in networked environments. They were developed for use in early large networks like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and the MIT. They were an early (starting mid 70s) step from time-shared hosts to personal networked workstations for developers.
RangerScience 6y ago
GH link, it's in Python, looks like it's using Django.
ssivark 6y ago
Definitely Smalltalk, and possibly some lisp systems built by individuals or small teams. The key idea is the absolute flexibility & malleability of the system, by giving users control of its internals, and having a small conceptual footprint.
zeckalpha 6y ago
Forth

andrewflnr 6y ago

Something LISPy with optional typing would probably be about right. But I think the real obstacles are in the ecosystem. There was a hint about "idiosyncracies of Heroku and Twilio". Technology for quickly deploying applications and sending text messages all over the world exists multiple times over. Why does it still take so much effort to integrate them? Why is business logic such a small portion of our codebases, and duct-tape such a large portion? Part of it is plain inadequate industry experience in building high-powered abstractions, but also market forces and network effects.

bitwize 6y ago

> Does anyone know of a language like this? My first thought was that it would probably be something Lisp-y, but I realized I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a language that was scaled to individual coders by design. The Lisp Machines were designed to be individual workstations, in an era when virtually all computers were batch or time-shared machines. I remember seeing a video from Symbolics, the leading Lisp Machine vendor, from the late 80s. Some VP of product development was on the screen, and he was talking the usual business stuff: blah blah improve developer productivity, blah blah features, blah blah. Then he said something interesting, something I've never heard from a hardware or software executive: "We want to make it possible for a small team of developers to build large projects, and for a single person to build a smaller project." So the idea of an individual programmer or a small strike team being able to build software of virtually any size is very much part of the Lisp culture.

lispm 6y ago
> Lisp Machines were designed to be individual workstations in networked environments. They were developed for use in early large networks like Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and the MIT. They were an early (starting mid 70s) step from time-shared hosts to personal networked workstations for developers.

RangerScience 6y ago

GH link, it's in Python, looks like it's using Django.

ssivark 6y ago

Definitely Smalltalk, and possibly some lisp systems built by individuals or small teams. The key idea is the absolute flexibility & malleability of the system, by giving users control of its internals, and having a small conceptual footprint.

zeckalpha 6y ago

Forth