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Land of Lisp (2010)
- behnamoh 5y agoSomehow lisp reminds me of Android and Linux. Too much flexibility and openness makes for a fractioned ecosystem that is hard to adopt by the masses.
- GavinMcG 5y agoThis is a bizarre take. Android is the most-adopted mobile OS in the world.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ngcc_hk 5y agoAnd unix is one of the most adopted desktop and mobile os in the works via macos.
- taeric 5y agoAgreed with the sibling that this is an odd take. As I often point out, though; I don't think we have any real insights as to what makes something that will be adopted by the masses. Outside of throwing effort at it. Too many of us in the technical space get caught on the idea of throwing that effort at the solution and the problem. You can also throw effort at the actual adoption by the masses. That is, market outreach and general sales.
- parentheses 5y agojust wow! great comic
- dang 5y agoSome past related threads: Land of Lisp (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677292 - April 2019 (80 comments) The Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15417735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15417735 - Oct 2017 (135 comments) How Lisp is Going to Save the World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030803 - Jan 2013 (229 comments) Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481456 - Jan 2012 (7 comments) Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3013673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3013673 - Sept 2011 (6 comments) Land of Lisp is finally out...and has a music video. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836935 - Oct 2010 (108 comments)
- podiki 5y agoIt is a fun book to get started with (Common) Lisp! We need more fun, but instructive, books like this.
- ojl 5y agoYes, books introducing languages by implementing fun applications, like games in this case, usually helps me keep motivation and interest longer than other kinds of “Introduction to ..” books.
- rg111 5y agoSame goes for me. I get tired when a book is practically a boring walkthrough of the user-facing API of a language. So, I look for something that actually makes me do something fun with the language that is being taught.
- Qem 5y agoI wonder if Hylang can be used to work on this book, for someone approaching Lisp from a Python background, or the impedance mismatch between Hylang and CL is too high to allow that.
- gilch 5y agoI think LoL is too CL-specific. If you know both languages first, you can pretty much translate, but since they'd be trying to learn Lisp in the first place, this is a bad idea. On the other hand, [Hissp][1] has a pretty good tutorial for anyone coming from a Python background. [1]: https://github.com/gilch/hissp https://github.com/gilch/hissp
- tosh 5y agoSimple but refined, guaranteed to blow your mind! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc
- mbrodersen 5y agoThanks for the link! So funny.
- civilized 5y agoWhat was the point of that comic? That Lisp has no bugs?
- spicybright 5y agoThat the methodology of lisp coding leads to less bugs. I'm not going to say that's true, but that's one of the points of the comic.
- _ph_ 5y agoI would phrase it a bit differently: Lisp gives you great tools for fighting bugs (which most code initially will have). In that sense, the comic i right. Also, given all the powerful features, the programmer is more productive and can spend more time on bug-hunting.
- civilized 5y agoPersonally I didn't get that message amid all the cutesiness, and I don't see how anyone would get that message if they weren't coming to the comic with that belief already. Preaching to the choir.
- mbrodersen 5y agoCan you elaborate on what Lisp gives you to fight bugs that other languages doesn’t have? I know Lisp quite well and I am not sure what specifically you are thinking about?
- lbj 5y agoI never understood why that video didn't make it onto MTV.
- FullyFunctional 5y agoFunny, but the premise is insane: that Lisp is ful of things that are done better elsewhere and that Lisp is the weapon against bugs. I worked professionally in Lisp (Scheme) and this is 100% false. In my experience dynamically typed languages (incl. Lisp, Python, and Smalltalk) will absolutely be more bug prone than a good typed language (like Haskell or Rust) on non-trivial programs.
- cracauer 5y agoYou can have type checking in Common Lisp: https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-t...
- wyager 5y agoAre there any implementations of good type systems on top of lisp (let's say approaching Haskell's in capability)?
- vindarel 5y agoThere is! Coalton: https://github.com/coalton-lang/coalton https://github.com/coalton-lang/coalton > Coalton is an efficient, statically typed functional programming language that supercharges Common Lisp
- rajandatta 5y agoTyped Racket is getting steady development and focus but more closely resembles Scheme.
- vegai_ 5y agoI was slightly surprised to learn how well Common Lisp had implemented its types. I keep wondering why CL almost completely failed to break into the minds of people in early 2000s. That was about the time I first learned about python, which kind of seemed to be everywhere. It took 5-10 years before I even heard of Common Lisp. And now it seems to me that the Common Lisp which was pretty much fixed in 90s is superior in many ways (runtime, programming environments, typing -- to mention a few) to even the revised python3 of 2021. And then Javascript, essentially a bad clone of Lisp, got popular? Makes absolutely no sense.
- nu11ptr 5y agoHa - that neat little music video is good marketing. I'm half tempted to try the book based on that. The only thing really stopping me is that I hate dynamically typed languages, but still I wonder if I shouldn't try Lisp just to "complete my education".
- vindarel 5y agoBe aware that SBCL does pretty good compile-time type checking. It helps a lot during dev. And there's the new https://github.com/coalton-lang/coalton https://github.com/coalton-lang/coalton to have like Haskell atop CL.
- rurban 5y agoLisp also has run-time type checking. In contrary to statically compiled languages, lisp doesn't throw away it's types at run-time, and is always type-safe.
- ignoreusernames 5y agoLisp is awesome, but I wish more places used regional pricing for online purchases. It's kinda crazy paying 40 dollars for an ebook since it's almost 1/5 of our minimum monthly wage (Brazil)
- grugagag 5y agoWhen you can’t afford you can download pirated version and donate if you feel that the book gave you value.
- Chris2048 5y agoBooks like this sometimes feature in humble bundles.
- paines 5y ago2021 was the 2nd year in a row that there was sales on Apress where they throw out great Lisp books for 6/7/8 Euro printed or digital. Subscribe to r/lisp or r/common_lisp and you will get the news.
- 7thaccount 5y agoI thought there was some interesting history in the book and certain common lisp implementations like SBCL are incredibly fast and powerful (some real secret alien technology there), but I thought that I could generally make shorter and clearer programs in just about any common scripting language (Python, Perl, PowerShell...etc). Granted, I know those languages better, but the book honestly didn't want to make me write Lisp. Homoiconicity is insanely powerful, but I find that specific syntax for certain things is easier for me to read and write up to a certain point.
- tomjakubowski 5y agoThe best part of Land of Lisp is learning to use SLIME. Except that learning it (and REPL-driven development) makes all other language/editor integrations seem inadequate! (one exception I know is CIDER for Clojure, also excellent)
- mbrodersen 5y agoNot my experience at all. I have spent enough time doing REPL-driven development to know that I most definitely do not prefer it. It might be superior for you. But that doesn’t automatically mean that it will also be superior for anybody else. We are all different, with different preferences and work styles.
- marai2 5y agoWould you mind shedding some light on how you do development and the pros and cons you experienced comparing to REPL-driven development?
- mjul 5y agoNot OP, but I would venture that REPL-driven development encourages a style that is essentially trial and error programming. This may be good for small scale, short lived scripts and projects but it does not scale. My experience from a somewhat large (400+ people) Clojure project is that people would be better off building a test suite as a checked-into-source-control REPL substitute to drive their experiments and make sure the expected application behaviour stays the same over time. REPLs may be useful, but don’t use them as your only tool.
- joe8756438 5y agoThis book is probably the most fun I have had with a programming book. I remember going through most of it the first day I cracked it open. Curious if anyone knows other books that take a similar approach: fun but not dumbed down. I tried a few from nostarch, in general I love their books, but i haven’t found one as engaging as land of lisp.
- metacontent 5y agoWhy's guide to Ruby is the only other book of that ilk that I'm aware of. https://poignant.guide/ https://poignant.guide/
- DASD 5y agoRealm of Racket https://nostarch.com/realmofracket https://nostarch.com/realmofracket
- rg111 5y agoNot as fun, but there is a Rust book that teaches you Rust through teaching you to programming 2D games. It is called Hands-On Rust [0], and it is from PragPub. When learning a language, I always look for books that actually make you do something rather than tediously, boringly walk you through the user-facing API. [0]: https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/ https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/
- vr46 5y agoPlus one, going through this now. Land of Lisp is great, been years since I touched it.
- pfarrell 5y ago“The Little Schemer”, by Daniel Friedman, takes a different tack, but, like LoL, is entertaining while teaching you the scheme language using the Socratic method.
- nonbirithm 5y agoOn the subject of creative Lisp tutorials, I like Manga de Wakaru Lisp: http://lambda.bugyo.tk/cdr/mwl/ http://lambda.bugyo.tk/cdr/mwl/
- ngcc_hk 5y agoGreat. I even had a copy of Japanese translation of the land of lisp. Quite fun to see lisp in another language.
- lenkite 5y agoI will consider learning Lisp when it offers a free compiler that builds for Android/iOS. The server space has already a surfeit of languages.
- lispm 5y agoFor Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eql5.android.repl&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eql5.andro... https://gitlab.com/eql/EQL5-Android/ https://gitlab.com/eql/EQL5-Android/