5 ms·

Is Lisp Regaining Popularity?

12 points by whispersnow 4y ago

I thought lisp is losing its audiences but seeing more Lisp posts on front page recently. Is it coming back?

krapp 4y ago
No. You just happen to be on a forum written in a Lisp that self-selects for Lisp aficionados and stories about Lisp. Hacker News isn't really a good signifier of trends at large.
- sargstuff 4y ago
  How much HN Racket has to be made, to signify trends at large?
- sargstuff 4y ago
  obviously there was no time to discuss this with a committee. Could HN's implementation, ARC, be considered a racket scheme if postings were termed volleys of text
mbrodersen 4y ago
Nope. The more a few individuals go out of their way to glorify a language on HN, the less relevant the language usually is. Nobody writes glowing posts about C/C++ and yet those languages absolutely dominate the software the world runs on.
- sargstuff 4y ago
  Well (Hy) there! would have made for for better HN s-expression tape conjuring language dual. (visual image) : https://camo.githubusercontent.com/eea10b37eb037c82285364013 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/eea10b37eb037c82285364013... [1] : https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy
  - sargstuff 4y ago
    see abrax3141 'I hope not...' for episode I. Problem with lisp in the Star Wars world, is 2 sets of double log plots in tree format is more like force lightning than sword dualing.
bjourne 4y ago
Yep, much in the same way that posts about the (British) Queen's death means the zombie apocalypse is imminent.
tra3 4y ago
Selection bias? Have you been learning lisp recently? I've been playing with Emacs lisp so I'm naturally drawn to clicking on anything lispy on HN. But I haven't noticed it elsewhere.
- whispersnow 4y ago
  Not really. Plus I don't feel that HN front page is customized base on browsing history, is it?
  - sargstuff 4y ago
    Not until HN has an option for dynamically switching between UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, or other character base sets; which would have to be based on browsing history.
abrax3141 4y ago
I hope not! If it becomes popular someone will wreck it by putting it on the jvm, replacing some of the parens with brackets, or something like that, creating an Algol-like syntax, adding some silly syntax to mark the macros, like an @, or something. Or even writing whole new programming languages on top of it. If any of that happen, I’ll have to go back to APL.
- sargstuff 4y ago
  see mbroderson 'Nope. ...' for episode II
- sargstuff 4y ago
  So, how CLOSE does porting lisp awk [1] to run gawk version 5 under a jvm with it's @include macros to facilitate OO programing come to fulfilling the 'will go back to APL' requirement? [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/impl/awk/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/...
  - sargstuff 4y ago
    Umm.... more formalized mocklisp : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MList Using J would be more up todate & quicker to start up by 2 characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)

12 points by whispersnow 4y ago

I thought lisp is losing its audiences but seeing more Lisp posts on front page recently. Is it coming back?

No. You just happen to be on a forum written in a Lisp that self-selects for Lisp aficionados and stories about Lisp. Hacker News isn't really a good signifier of trends at large.

sargstuff 4y ago
How much HN Racket has to be made, to signify trends at large?
sargstuff 4y ago
obviously there was no time to discuss this with a committee. Could HN's implementation, ARC, be considered a racket scheme if postings were termed volleys of text

mbrodersen 4y ago

Nope. The more a few individuals go out of their way to glorify a language on HN, the less relevant the language usually is. Nobody writes glowing posts about C/C++ and yet those languages absolutely dominate the software the world runs on.

sargstuff 4y ago
Well (Hy) there! would have made for for better HN s-expression tape conjuring language dual. (visual image) : https://camo.githubusercontent.com/eea10b37eb037c82285364013 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/eea10b37eb037c82285364013... [1] : https://github.com/hylang/hy https://github.com/hylang/hy
- sargstuff 4y ago
  see abrax3141 'I hope not...' for episode I. Problem with lisp in the Star Wars world, is 2 sets of double log plots in tree format is more like force lightning than sword dualing.

bjourne 4y ago

Yep, much in the same way that posts about the (British) Queen's death means the zombie apocalypse is imminent.

tra3 4y ago

Selection bias? Have you been learning lisp recently? I've been playing with Emacs lisp so I'm naturally drawn to clicking on anything lispy on HN. But I haven't noticed it elsewhere.

whispersnow 4y ago
Not really. Plus I don't feel that HN front page is customized base on browsing history, is it?
- sargstuff 4y ago
  Not until HN has an option for dynamically switching between UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, or other character base sets; which would have to be based on browsing history.

abrax3141 4y ago

I hope not! If it becomes popular someone will wreck it by putting it on the jvm, replacing some of the parens with brackets, or something like that, creating an Algol-like syntax, adding some silly syntax to mark the macros, like an @, or something. Or even writing whole new programming languages on top of it. If any of that happen, I’ll have to go back to APL.

sargstuff 4y ago
see mbroderson 'Nope. ...' for episode II
sargstuff 4y ago
So, how CLOSE does porting lisp awk [1] to run gawk version 5 under a jvm with it's @include macros to facilitate OO programing come to fulfilling the 'will go back to APL' requirement? [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/impl/awk/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/...
- sargstuff 4y ago
  Umm.... more formalized mocklisp : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MList Using J would be more up todate & quicker to start up by 2 characters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)