4 ms·

We're talking about programming a lot on HN, and Lisp is one of more familiar things in programming, so sometimes assumptions are too high, I guess.

by avmich 5y ago

pphysch 5y ago
> Lisp is one of more familiar things in programming Simply not true in practice. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... edit: fixed link, header was pointing at wrong section
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Clojure is top of that list and Common Lisp is just below Go. Not sure what your point is... Even if people don't touch Lisp they know it's that strange language with all the parentheses...
  - asdfuiopasdf 5y ago
    Clojure is no where near top, nor near go? Go 9.55% ... about a dozen entries ... Clojure 1.88% Elixir 1.74% LISP 1.33%
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      See one of my previous responses. Link was changed to highlight a different stat.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Are you sure you're looking at the main list, for all respondents? After counting a bit, Clojure seems to be in 31st place and Common Lisp isn't even on the list. Clojure is lower than even languages which are not considered popular, for example Powershell or Dart. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... Maybe your browser didn't jump to the correct section of the survey?
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      He changed the link since I made my comment. See his edit. Originally he was pointing to developer pay by language, which Clojure tops and Lisp is fairly high on.
      - pphysch 5y ago
        Yeah if you click the header hypertext (not link icon) in my corrected link, it misdirects to another section. Sorry about that.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  i think the parent is well aware of the unpopularity of lisp. yet that does nothing to disprove that lisp is one of the most 'familiar things in programming'. almost all programmers who have attended some academic course on programming languages know about lisp
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Perhaps true for past generations. Even MIT recently rewrote SICP in Javascript for its undergrads, IIRC.
    - randomifcpfan 5y ago
      MIT also switched from Scheme to Python for undergraduate CS programming courses. They did it for the libraries and ease of use.
      - p_l 5y ago
        And because the goal of 6.01 was different from 6.001, which was the biggest thing in the change. A graduate of 6.001 was supposed to be on path to understand computation et al - a graduate of 6.01 is given enough skills to apply a bit of programming necessary for his next courses but isn't expected to actually grok programming, just string enough libraries together.
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      im definitely not part of the past generation, but i get your point nonetheless. cs courses now are more focused on creating industry-ready developers than they are on creating solid academic programmers. in this sense cs courses now are much more vocational than they are academic. if we can agree on this difference between developers and programmers, then i still agree with the familiarity statement by the parent also by the way, the recently released follow-up to SICP [0] is still in very much in lisp, MIT Scheme to be specific (like the original SICP). however, this book is far from an introductory text in software engineering [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility
- vindarel 5y ago
  Here Lisp is #30 higher than Haskell, Julia, Clojure, D, Ada, Scala, Erlang, Elixir, F#, OCaml… https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ (yes that index measures nothing meaningful but maybe at least a "familiar thing") (edit) and just below Rust which is #29 ahah)
  - hajile 5y ago
    If you look at modern, general-purpose languages in order, you get something more like Python, C, Java, C++, C#, VB.net, JS, PHP, Groovy, Ruby, Swift, Perl, Go, Lua, Rust, Lisp That would put it at 14 to 16 depending on your feelings about VB and Perl. Loads of Java people talk about Kotlin, but it's less popular than lisp Google pushes Dart/Flutter, but it's less popular than lisp Even Typescript is rated as less popular than Lisp.

We're talking about programming a lot on HN, and Lisp is one of more familiar things in programming, so sometimes assumptions are too high, I guess.

by avmich 5y ago

We're talking about programming a lot on HN, and Lisp is one of more familiar things in programming, so sometimes assumptions are too high, I guess.

pphysch 5y ago

> Lisp is one of more familiar things in programming Simply not true in practice. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... edit: fixed link, header was pointing at wrong section

Mikeb85 5y ago
Clojure is top of that list and Common Lisp is just below Go. Not sure what your point is... Even if people don't touch Lisp they know it's that strange language with all the parentheses...
- asdfuiopasdf 5y ago
  Clojure is no where near top, nor near go? Go 9.55% ... about a dozen entries ... Clojure 1.88% Elixir 1.74% LISP 1.33%
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    See one of my previous responses. Link was changed to highlight a different stat.
- oblio 5y ago
  Are you sure you're looking at the main list, for all respondents? After counting a bit, Clojure seems to be in 31st place and Common Lisp isn't even on the list. Clojure is lower than even languages which are not considered popular, for example Powershell or Dart. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... Maybe your browser didn't jump to the correct section of the survey?
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    He changed the link since I made my comment. See his edit. Originally he was pointing to developer pay by language, which Clojure tops and Lisp is fairly high on.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      Yeah if you click the header hypertext (not link icon) in my corrected link, it misdirects to another section. Sorry about that.
medo-bear 5y ago
i think the parent is well aware of the unpopularity of lisp. yet that does nothing to disprove that lisp is one of the most 'familiar things in programming'. almost all programmers who have attended some academic course on programming languages know about lisp
- pphysch 5y ago
  Perhaps true for past generations. Even MIT recently rewrote SICP in Javascript for its undergrads, IIRC.
  - randomifcpfan 5y ago
    MIT also switched from Scheme to Python for undergraduate CS programming courses. They did it for the libraries and ease of use.
    - p_l 5y ago
      And because the goal of 6.01 was different from 6.001, which was the biggest thing in the change. A graduate of 6.001 was supposed to be on path to understand computation et al - a graduate of 6.01 is given enough skills to apply a bit of programming necessary for his next courses but isn't expected to actually grok programming, just string enough libraries together.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    im definitely not part of the past generation, but i get your point nonetheless. cs courses now are more focused on creating industry-ready developers than they are on creating solid academic programmers. in this sense cs courses now are much more vocational than they are academic. if we can agree on this difference between developers and programmers, then i still agree with the familiarity statement by the parent also by the way, the recently released follow-up to SICP [0] is still in very much in lisp, MIT Scheme to be specific (like the original SICP). however, this book is far from an introductory text in software engineering [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/software-design-flexibility
vindarel 5y ago
Here Lisp is #30 higher than Haskell, Julia, Clojure, D, Ada, Scala, Erlang, Elixir, F#, OCaml… https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ (yes that index measures nothing meaningful but maybe at least a "familiar thing") (edit) and just below Rust which is #29 ahah)
- hajile 5y ago
  If you look at modern, general-purpose languages in order, you get something more like Python, C, Java, C++, C#, VB.net, JS, PHP, Groovy, Ruby, Swift, Perl, Go, Lua, Rust, Lisp That would put it at 14 to 16 depending on your feelings about VB and Perl. Loads of Java people talk about Kotlin, but it's less popular than lisp Google pushes Dart/Flutter, but it's less popular than lisp Even Typescript is rated as less popular than Lisp.