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> On the other hand, Lisp code written some 30 years ago will most of the time, without issue, work on a modern Common Lisp implementation. Yeah, just like Per

> On the other hand, Lisp code written some 30 years ago will most of the time, without issue, work on a modern Common Lisp implementation. Yeah, just like Perl. Or Latin. No one uses them, these are dead languages that belong to a museum. It can be fun to study them and you definitely should if you want to be well-educated and know the history behind the modern world, but that's it.

surfpel 3y ago
The irony of this comment is that HN is written in Lisp.
- munch117 3y ago
  I thought HN was written in Arc. I don't think the interoperability between Common Lisp implementations extends to Arc.
  - robocat 3y ago
    https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc Out of date, but you can read the ARC code as HN was 11 years ago.
mepian 3y ago
Arm, AMD, and Intel are using a Common Lisp application called ACL2 to formally verify their main products. Google Flights' core is written in Common Lisp. It's far from dead.
- coldtea 3y ago
  If you can enumerate some projects using it, and even more so, if you need to, then it's much closer to dead than alive. It's like saying "The Vatican still uses latin, it's not a completely dead language".
  - mepian 3y ago
    There are many many more users of CL, I just listed some household names. If you don't hear about some technology every day, it doesn't mean it has to be "dead", there are plenty of important and "alive" technologies that you are not aware of. You just can't win this argument, if you try to prove the opposite you automatically lose, that's rather unreasonable.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >There are many many more users of CL, I just listed some household names. I know. But it's still admitting defeat, as they're not as many as to make its liveliness self-evident, and make giving a list of projects using the language moot. Nobody will ask for such proof from a language whose liveliness is not in dispute, one for which the see constant mentions on social media, jobs posted, major new projects being written in them, companies using them left and right, books a-plenty being written all the time about them, meeting people who use them is trivial, and so on... >You just can't win this argument, if you try to prove the opposite you automatically lose, that's rather unreasonable. This "inabillity to win" using such proof though, makes sense though if one understands "language X is dead" as not some kind of absolute statement that nobody uses it, but rather as it was meant: "it's not as lively as it was, nor it is particularly popular". "But this company uses it somewhere" doesn't really answer it. Companies use all kinds of niche stuff here and there, on legacy projects, stuff they bought, or stuff done by some small team and used because "it works, so let's keep it", but that stuff remains niche. We can find companies using Eiffel, APL, and whatever too. Does mean they're not dead-dead either, doesn't mean there's much life in them. If it was one of the handful of "Google sanctioned official langauges" for example that stuff is written is, that would be a good argument (even if that was still just an individual company).
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    probably not the best example because both the Catholic Church and Latin are likely still going to be around when all of us, most programming languages, companies and probably countries are in the dust peak popularity in the <current year> in a domain where most things have a half life of less than 20 years isn't a good indicator for longevity.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I wish ITA did some talks because I assume their experience of CL is very different from most. Even at the project management layer, they have deep serious constraints.. it's not just a simple product.
indymike 3y ago
> Yeah, just like Perl. Or Latin. No one uses them, these are dead languages that belong to a museum. The best analogy I have for Lisp is that it is the wheelbarrow of languages. It was invented long ago and is in no way obsolete. In many ways it achieved a level of mastery of it's use domain that makes it almost impossible to think of a substitute. When you need a wheelbarrow, a dump truck will not do, and neither will a bicycle or automobile. There is a reason for this rather famous quote: "Whoever does not understand LISP, is doomed to reinvent it."

surfpel 3y ago

The irony of this comment is that HN is written in Lisp.

munch117 3y ago
I thought HN was written in Arc. I don't think the interoperability between Common Lisp implementations extends to Arc.
- robocat 3y ago
  https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc Out of date, but you can read the ARC code as HN was 11 years ago.

mepian 3y ago

Arm, AMD, and Intel are using a Common Lisp application called ACL2 to formally verify their main products. Google Flights' core is written in Common Lisp. It's far from dead.

coldtea 3y ago
If you can enumerate some projects using it, and even more so, if you need to, then it's much closer to dead than alive. It's like saying "The Vatican still uses latin, it's not a completely dead language".
- mepian 3y ago
  There are many many more users of CL, I just listed some household names. If you don't hear about some technology every day, it doesn't mean it has to be "dead", there are plenty of important and "alive" technologies that you are not aware of. You just can't win this argument, if you try to prove the opposite you automatically lose, that's rather unreasonable.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >There are many many more users of CL, I just listed some household names. I know. But it's still admitting defeat, as they're not as many as to make its liveliness self-evident, and make giving a list of projects using the language moot. Nobody will ask for such proof from a language whose liveliness is not in dispute, one for which the see constant mentions on social media, jobs posted, major new projects being written in them, companies using them left and right, books a-plenty being written all the time about them, meeting people who use them is trivial, and so on... >You just can't win this argument, if you try to prove the opposite you automatically lose, that's rather unreasonable. This "inabillity to win" using such proof though, makes sense though if one understands "language X is dead" as not some kind of absolute statement that nobody uses it, but rather as it was meant: "it's not as lively as it was, nor it is particularly popular". "But this company uses it somewhere" doesn't really answer it. Companies use all kinds of niche stuff here and there, on legacy projects, stuff they bought, or stuff done by some small team and used because "it works, so let's keep it", but that stuff remains niche. We can find companies using Eiffel, APL, and whatever too. Does mean they're not dead-dead either, doesn't mean there's much life in them. If it was one of the handful of "Google sanctioned official langauges" for example that stuff is written is, that would be a good argument (even if that was still just an individual company).
- Barrin92 3y ago
  probably not the best example because both the Catholic Church and Latin are likely still going to be around when all of us, most programming languages, companies and probably countries are in the dust peak popularity in the <current year> in a domain where most things have a half life of less than 20 years isn't a good indicator for longevity.
agumonkey 3y ago
I wish ITA did some talks because I assume their experience of CL is very different from most. Even at the project management layer, they have deep serious constraints.. it's not just a simple product.

indymike 3y ago

> Yeah, just like Perl. Or Latin. No one uses them, these are dead languages that belong to a museum. The best analogy I have for Lisp is that it is the wheelbarrow of languages. It was invented long ago and is in no way obsolete. In many ways it achieved a level of mastery of it's use domain that makes it almost impossible to think of a substitute. When you need a wheelbarrow, a dump truck will not do, and neither will a bicycle or automobile. There is a reason for this rather famous quote: "Whoever does not understand LISP, is doomed to reinvent it."