3 ms·

Common lisp and a handful of other scheme/lisp variants, for example, if we talk about high-level general purpose languages. Lush was a lispy open-source langu

by kgwgk 4y ago

Common lisp and a handful of other scheme/lisp variants, for example, if we talk about high-level general purpose languages. Lush was a lispy open-source language - implemented in C - that deserved a better outcome. And of course there were other scripting languages around like Perl, Tcl and Lua. Torch was built on top of the latter, by the way.

323 4y ago
The consensus at the time was that one should only use Perl/Tcl for legacy reasons. And that these languages should be replaced with Python. A few examples, there were countless articles like these: 2000 Eric Raymond (!) - Why Python? > It was at this point I realized I was probably leaving Perl behind. ... For anything larger or more complex, I have come to prefer the subtle virtues of Python—and I think you will, too. https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882 2002 What's wrong with Perl: https://www.garshol.priv.no/download/text/perl.html https://www.garshol.priv.no/download/text/perl.html
- kgwgk 4y ago
  To clarify, I was mentioning Perl/Tcl as existing alternatives that were "equally bad" as Python - not necessarily better. In any case, the fact that a teaching language like python ended being used for numerical computing - a task that it was not suited for - is accidental.
zem 4y ago
lush was sadly dynamically scoped at a time the lisp universe in general had agreed lexical scope was the way to go. I feel like it could have gotten a lot more traction if it wasn't for that. (also if I remember correctly its desktop gui libraries were windows only)
- kgwgk 4y ago
  I think it was the other way around: the GUI was based on X11. http://lush.sourceforge.net/news.html http://lush.sourceforge.net/news.html 2003-02-19: Rejoice, rejoice! Thanks to Leon, the CVS version now compiles and runs on Windoze under Cygwin. Be sure to read the README.cygwin before installing. What works: the interpreter, the compiler, the dynamic loader, X11 graphics and events. What doesn't (yet) work: external packages such as GSL, SDL, OpenGL...

by kgwgk 4y ago

323 4y ago

The consensus at the time was that one should only use Perl/Tcl for legacy reasons. And that these languages should be replaced with Python. A few examples, there were countless articles like these: 2000 Eric Raymond (!) - Why Python? > It was at this point I realized I was probably leaving Perl behind. ... For anything larger or more complex, I have come to prefer the subtle virtues of Python—and I think you will, too. https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882 2002 What's wrong with Perl: https://www.garshol.priv.no/download/text/perl.html https://www.garshol.priv.no/download/text/perl.html

kgwgk 4y ago
To clarify, I was mentioning Perl/Tcl as existing alternatives that were "equally bad" as Python - not necessarily better. In any case, the fact that a teaching language like python ended being used for numerical computing - a task that it was not suited for - is accidental.

zem 4y ago

lush was sadly dynamically scoped at a time the lisp universe in general had agreed lexical scope was the way to go. I feel like it could have gotten a lot more traction if it wasn't for that. (also if I remember correctly its desktop gui libraries were windows only)

kgwgk 4y ago
I think it was the other way around: the GUI was based on X11. http://lush.sourceforge.net/news.html http://lush.sourceforge.net/news.html 2003-02-19: Rejoice, rejoice! Thanks to Leon, the CVS version now compiles and runs on Windoze under Cygwin. Be sure to read the README.cygwin before installing. What works: the interpreter, the compiler, the dynamic loader, X11 graphics and events. What doesn't (yet) work: external packages such as GSL, SDL, OpenGL...