5 ms·

FWIW, Common Lisp is already a "systems Lisp".

eadmund 4y ago
It really saddens me how much Scheme implementations have proven that Greenspun's Tenth Rule — any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp — applies to more than just C and Fortran. Rather than incompatibly reimplementing all the great things which make Lisp work so well for so many problems, why not just use Lisp? Is it ignorance? Is it hubris? Maybe it's genius, and I just don't get it.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  I have a theory about it, as someone who used Lisp since 1987 and Scheme more thereafter: there's no concise version of what https://docs.python.org https://docs.python.org is and that makes ALL the difference. I know what exists, have the books, etc, but nothing is as well organized to be as easily searchable and without digression as what the Python world has set up for itself.
  - carapace 4y ago
    I tried to get into SBCL a few months ago and I found all of the documentation I encountered to be really good (really good) but there was just too much to learn. I'm not complaining, I just didn't have the time personally to climb the learning curve (despite all the available lore from previous climbers.) When you start with a small system and reinvent things, you know them from the inside out. Often that's easier and more fun than reading up on an existing large system. The downside, of course, is that we wind up with incompatibilities and myriad idiosyncratic ways of doing things.
    - abrax3141 4y ago
      This is called “The Paradox of the Active User” and it underlies an enormous amount of why our world sucks (not that it all sucks, but this underlies much of where it does). In short: I’m too busy to learn something that will make me so much happier and more productive forever. (Aka. “I’ll just sit in the dark.” :-)
      - carapace 4y ago
        Perhaps perversely, your comment is almost, but not quite, enough to push me to make a second run at it. I mean, I goddamned know CL is better. :) Cheers! I've pondered what strange reasons might lurk in the depths of me psyche that could be inhibiting from using Lisp.
        abrax3141 4y ago
        Hint: Don't let the parens turn you off. I promise that once you get over the hump, you will learn to love them, and won't ever want to use a language that doesn't have them!
        johnbendi 4y ago
        I don't think that's the right mindset to have. One should just learn to appreciate diversity. One shouldn't approach any language with the view that one is about to discover a language that rules them all. Just learn with a view to discover the strengths and weaknesses of whatever language you are dealing with at that moment, as every language must have those.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Conte...
    - eadmund 4y ago
      True enough, but the spec is a specification, not a guide. It gives a lot of the 'what,' but not a whole lot of the 'why.' That's part of what made Practical Common Lisp so revolutionary.
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      the spec kinda sucks for usability, but thank goodness it exists; it's exactly what i meant docs.python.org does way better
  - klyrs 4y ago
    As a lisp novice, I found this to be a principal challenge. Most of the docs I find will have either function signatures or examples, but the examples rarely cover the bases. I think it's pretty common for dynamically typed languages to have very hand-wavy documentation, but lisp is big on the arcane and powerful. I'd often find answers to my questions in the entirely wrong places, e.g. pearls of wisdom tucked in an example that I stumbled across looking for something entirely different.
- hvs 4y ago
  One of the inventors of Scheme literally wrote the book on Lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_the_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_the_Language
  - eadmund 4y ago
    I'm aware! Although Common Lisp as specified does differ somewhat from the language he describes in his book. But you kinda implicitly assume my point: Scheme and Lisp are different things. That doesn't make Scheme bad or Lisp good, although I will assert that Scheme is underspecified and Lisp is pretty decent.

It really saddens me how much Scheme implementations have proven that Greenspun's Tenth Rule — any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp — applies to more than just C and Fortran. Rather than incompatibly reimplementing all the great things which make Lisp work so well for so many problems, why not just use Lisp? Is it ignorance? Is it hubris? Maybe it's genius, and I just don't get it.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
I have a theory about it, as someone who used Lisp since 1987 and Scheme more thereafter: there's no concise version of what https://docs.python.org https://docs.python.org is and that makes ALL the difference. I know what exists, have the books, etc, but nothing is as well organized to be as easily searchable and without digression as what the Python world has set up for itself.
- carapace 4y ago
  I tried to get into SBCL a few months ago and I found all of the documentation I encountered to be really good (really good) but there was just too much to learn. I'm not complaining, I just didn't have the time personally to climb the learning curve (despite all the available lore from previous climbers.) When you start with a small system and reinvent things, you know them from the inside out. Often that's easier and more fun than reading up on an existing large system. The downside, of course, is that we wind up with incompatibilities and myriad idiosyncratic ways of doing things.
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    This is called “The Paradox of the Active User” and it underlies an enormous amount of why our world sucks (not that it all sucks, but this underlies much of where it does). In short: I’m too busy to learn something that will make me so much happier and more productive forever. (Aka. “I’ll just sit in the dark.” :-)
    - carapace 4y ago
      Perhaps perversely, your comment is almost, but not quite, enough to push me to make a second run at it. I mean, I goddamned know CL is better. :) Cheers! I've pondered what strange reasons might lurk in the depths of me psyche that could be inhibiting from using Lisp.
      - abrax3141 4y ago
        Hint: Don't let the parens turn you off. I promise that once you get over the hump, you will learn to love them, and won't ever want to use a language that doesn't have them!
        johnbendi 4y ago
        I don't think that's the right mindset to have. One should just learn to appreciate diversity. One shouldn't approach any language with the view that one is about to discover a language that rules them all. Just learn with a view to discover the strengths and weaknesses of whatever language you are dealing with at that moment, as every language must have those.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Conte...
  - eadmund 4y ago
    True enough, but the spec is a specification, not a guide. It gives a lot of the 'what,' but not a whole lot of the 'why.' That's part of what made Practical Common Lisp so revolutionary.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    the spec kinda sucks for usability, but thank goodness it exists; it's exactly what i meant docs.python.org does way better
- klyrs 4y ago
  As a lisp novice, I found this to be a principal challenge. Most of the docs I find will have either function signatures or examples, but the examples rarely cover the bases. I think it's pretty common for dynamically typed languages to have very hand-wavy documentation, but lisp is big on the arcane and powerful. I'd often find answers to my questions in the entirely wrong places, e.g. pearls of wisdom tucked in an example that I stumbled across looking for something entirely different.
hvs 4y ago
One of the inventors of Scheme literally wrote the book on Lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_the_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_the_Language
- eadmund 4y ago
  I'm aware! Although Common Lisp as specified does differ somewhat from the language he describes in his book. But you kinda implicitly assume my point: Scheme and Lisp are different things. That doesn't make Scheme bad or Lisp good, although I will assert that Scheme is underspecified and Lisp is pretty decent.