3 ms·

Was Lisp actually ever risen at JPL, or was it just used on these handful of projects by a single or small group of developers? > At one point an attempt was m

by bmitc 4y ago

Was Lisp actually ever risen at JPL, or was it just used on these handful of projects by a single or small group of developers? > At one point an attempt was made to port one part of the system (the planner) to C++. This attempt had to be abandoned after a year. Based on this experience I think it's safe to say that if not for Lisp the Remote Agent would have failed. I like Lisp and am certainly no fan of the complexity of C++, and barely know it because of such, but is this the conclusion that should be taken? Porting an existing and in-work application from one language to another, with the two languages being rather wildly different, seems like trouble from the start. It doesn't address, however, the idea of starting from the beginning with another language. The conclusion quoted seems to skip over the possibility of using another language from the start.

spicybright 4y ago
I'm going to straw man a bit, but it feels like lisp enthusiasts are desperate to find stories of commercial software being written in lisp. I'm sure there's many examples I haven't heard of that are legitimate (using lisp for almost all of a specific domain at scale and having a mature codebase, tho that's arguable) but I've yet to see any example that has meat on it's bones, besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. I don't blame them though, I root for lisp very much. I'd rather see this articles like this posted and picked apart for validity vs not hearing about them at all.
- kaveh808 4y ago
  The one genuinely successful Lisp company I can think of was ITA/Orbitz. They were acquired by Google, who AFAIK still maintains the Common Lisp code base.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Autodesk cad cam ? Was that not Lisp?
  - xarope 4y ago
    autolisp was definitely lisp'ish, I hacked some macros at some time. but nowadays it's C# and python in Revit
- HexDecOctBin 4y ago
  > besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. Well, good instincts, because it wasn't. Naughty Dog used Lisp to write a compiler for an s-expression based C-like language called GOAL (it was kind of a macro-assembler with a register allocator). The reason for using s-expressions was to get a syntactic macro system at compile time. The game engine was written in this GOAL language. There was no list processing (car, cdr) or garbage collection happening on a PS2, only during compilation in macro-expansion.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Lisps are more than just tracing GC and list processing. There are implementations with other forms of memory management, and they have long supported other kinds of datastructures.
    - HexDecOctBin 4y ago
      What would be the defining characteristics of Lisps, that separate them from other languages? Surely it can't be simply s-exps, since that is pretty much all GOAL and Lisps share. Would a C written in the form of s-exps qualify as a Lisp?
      - lispm 4y ago
        My impression is that GOAL and Lisp shares quite a bit more. https://opengoal.dev/docs/reference/lib https://opengoal.dev/docs/reference/lib You might want to look at the features of real Lisp or Scheme implementations.
        HexDecOctBin 4y ago
        Not really, it did have first class symbols used for code/data hotloading, but otherwise it's mostly a C-with-classes in s-exprs.
        4y ago
- adastra22 4y ago
  A bit ironic that you post this in a website written in Lisp.
- uxcolumbo 4y ago
  Nubank, largest fintech bank across Latin America uses Clojure extensively. https://building.nubank.com.br/working-with-clojure-at-nubank/ https://building.nubank.com.br/working-with-clojure-at-nuban...
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Siscog in Portugal, most of their software used to be Lisp based even if not listed on the careers section. https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ They were even sponsors on 2022 European Lisp Symposium. https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/news/siscog-sponsors-the-2022-european-lisp-symposium/ https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/news/siscog-sponsors-the-2022-eu...

by bmitc 4y ago

spicybright 4y ago

I'm going to straw man a bit, but it feels like lisp enthusiasts are desperate to find stories of commercial software being written in lisp. I'm sure there's many examples I haven't heard of that are legitimate (using lisp for almost all of a specific domain at scale and having a mature codebase, tho that's arguable) but I've yet to see any example that has meat on it's bones, besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. I don't blame them though, I root for lisp very much. I'd rather see this articles like this posted and picked apart for validity vs not hearing about them at all.

kaveh808 4y ago
The one genuinely successful Lisp company I can think of was ITA/Orbitz. They were acquired by Google, who AFAIK still maintains the Common Lisp code base.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
Autodesk cad cam ? Was that not Lisp?
- xarope 4y ago
  autolisp was definitely lisp'ish, I hacked some macros at some time. but nowadays it's C# and python in Revit
HexDecOctBin 4y ago
> besides the company that did crash bandicoot on the PS1. And even that one I'm unsure of as I feel it's been mythologized with how often it's pointed to. Well, good instincts, because it wasn't. Naughty Dog used Lisp to write a compiler for an s-expression based C-like language called GOAL (it was kind of a macro-assembler with a register allocator). The reason for using s-expressions was to get a syntactic macro system at compile time. The game engine was written in this GOAL language. There was no list processing (car, cdr) or garbage collection happening on a PS2, only during compilation in macro-expansion.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Lisps are more than just tracing GC and list processing. There are implementations with other forms of memory management, and they have long supported other kinds of datastructures.
  - HexDecOctBin 4y ago
    What would be the defining characteristics of Lisps, that separate them from other languages? Surely it can't be simply s-exps, since that is pretty much all GOAL and Lisps share. Would a C written in the form of s-exps qualify as a Lisp?
    - lispm 4y ago
      My impression is that GOAL and Lisp shares quite a bit more. https://opengoal.dev/docs/reference/lib https://opengoal.dev/docs/reference/lib You might want to look at the features of real Lisp or Scheme implementations.
      - HexDecOctBin 4y ago
        Not really, it did have first class symbols used for code/data hotloading, but otherwise it's mostly a C-with-classes in s-exprs.
        4y ago
adastra22 4y ago
A bit ironic that you post this in a website written in Lisp.
uxcolumbo 4y ago
Nubank, largest fintech bank across Latin America uses Clojure extensively. https://building.nubank.com.br/working-with-clojure-at-nubank/ https://building.nubank.com.br/working-with-clojure-at-nuban...
pjmlp 4y ago
Siscog in Portugal, most of their software used to be Lisp based even if not listed on the careers section. https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/ They were even sponsors on 2022 European Lisp Symposium. https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/news/siscog-sponsors-the-2022-european-lisp-symposium/ https://www.siscog.pt/en-gb/news/siscog-sponsors-the-2022-eu...