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As a counter example: I once had a short conversation with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about he and Steve dropping Common Lisp in favor of Python. They lov
by mark_l_watson 4y ago
As a counter example: I once had a short conversation with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about he and Steve dropping Common Lisp in favor of Python. They loved Common Lisp but I think the expression he used was something like "the Common Lisp code kept falling down" and said that moving to the Python ecosystem stabilized things.
I share this experience, as a Common Lisp developer (for 40 years!). I feel like while Common Lisp is a fantastic language for many reasons, I also understand that in many situations the Python ecosystem is a better choice.
- guenthert 4y agoThat needs expanding though. A good Common Lisp compiler, e.g. SBCL, does perform a bunch of checks for correctness during compilation, which can further improved upon by adding static type declarations. The (C)Python interpreter o.t.o.h. does verify only the syntax in the most shallow way. Type hints there can be used by a linter (and perhaps by an alternative or future implementation of the Python interpreter), but I don't think such type hints were available at the time Reddit chose Python. Python's significant indentation might make the source code more (human) readable (and that's really it's magic power), but poses a challenge during refactoring. Without question you'll find more easily competent Python programmers than Common Lisp programmers, but that Common Lisp would lead to more fragile code isn't as obvious.
- yunohn 4y ago> and that's really it's magic power A lot of discussion here is missing this absolutely crucial aspect. Code is meant for humans first, expressing what you want to do cleanly is magnitudes more important than maximum performance.