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Lisp syntax is an extreme impediment to uptake. Consider what happened to Lisp-Stat. It was a really slick package, but people immediately dropped it when R bec

by wrp 4y ago

Lisp syntax is an extreme impediment to uptake. Consider what happened to Lisp-Stat. It was a really slick package, but people immediately dropped it when R became available. Lisp defenders like to think that R won out because of better libraries, performance, or some such. The truth is that the stampede began while R was still in a rough state, people were so eager to get away from Lisp.

lispm 4y ago
Ironically R inside is still much of a Lisp. > The truth is that the stampede began while R was still in a rough state, people were so eager to get away from Lisp. That's not a big surprise. The syntax is/was an important reason. Most users of statistics / maths software prefer a more math-like notation. Even the bigger Lisp applications in the maths area provide that always: Macsyma/Maxima, Reduce, Axiom, Derive, .. One could have written that on top of Lisp, but it was much more convenient to develop a specialized language/runtime using C. C + Lisp + R would have been more complex than C + R.
gnufx 4y ago
Is it clear people wanted to get away from Lisp rather than use a more-or-less clone of S? (One of R's originators did propose moving back to a Lisp base [1], though part of the justification was HPC, which is now at least partially covered [2].) However, much as I like Lisp, I do want a mixfix syntax for interactive use like R, but something CGOL-ish is easy enough; I don't remember xlisp-stat having something like that. 1. https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-2008.pdf https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-20... 2. https://pbdr.org https://pbdr.org
- wrp 4y ago
  > Is it clear people wanted to get away from Lisp rather than use a more-or-less clone of S? That's a good point. How many statisticians were familiar with S but were using Lisp-Stat just because it was free? I don't seem to have traveled in those circles. I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but I don't remember encountering that on campus. Another slick Lisp package that got too little attention was Yann LeCun's Lush.

by wrp 4y ago

lispm 4y ago

Ironically R inside is still much of a Lisp. > The truth is that the stampede began while R was still in a rough state, people were so eager to get away from Lisp. That's not a big surprise. The syntax is/was an important reason. Most users of statistics / maths software prefer a more math-like notation. Even the bigger Lisp applications in the maths area provide that always: Macsyma/Maxima, Reduce, Axiom, Derive, .. One could have written that on top of Lisp, but it was much more convenient to develop a specialized language/runtime using C. C + Lisp + R would have been more complex than C + R.

gnufx 4y ago

Is it clear people wanted to get away from Lisp rather than use a more-or-less clone of S? (One of R's originators did propose moving back to a Lisp base [1], though part of the justification was HPC, which is now at least partially covered [2].) However, much as I like Lisp, I do want a mixfix syntax for interactive use like R, but something CGOL-ish is easy enough; I don't remember xlisp-stat having something like that. 1. https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-2008.pdf https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-20... 2. https://pbdr.org https://pbdr.org

wrp 4y ago
> Is it clear people wanted to get away from Lisp rather than use a more-or-less clone of S? That's a good point. How many statisticians were familiar with S but were using Lisp-Stat just because it was free? I don't seem to have traveled in those circles. I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but I don't remember encountering that on campus. Another slick Lisp package that got too little attention was Yann LeCun's Lush.