4 ms·

The article seems like mostly about Common Lisp, but how many of the points are applicable to rest of Lisps? (Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Janet, etc)

ravi-delia 4y ago
Somewhat! The authors talk about the longevity of CL, which is less a fact about lisp than an accident of history. Janet, for instance, is obviously quite new. Elisp is quite old, but I wouldn't use it for non-emacs development. Schemes are old, and while there are lots of one-off schemes which seem to be educational projects for their developers there are also lots of very old and battle-tested dialects (Chicken scheme comes to mind, Racket is old-ish and backed by its use in education). The interactivity is fairly universal. Scheme in its smallest nuts and bolts doesn't care that much about interactivity, giving eval but no other real support for a REPL, but due to cultural effects pretty much every specific scheme is very interactive. I've seen complaints about every specific lisp I've ever used that it's not a real lisp because it doesn't support [extremely specific interactive option user integrated into their workflow in '93 and can't live without], but everything the authors talked about is likely to be present in just about every lisp.
behnamoh 4y ago
Janet is not a Lisp, it uses parentheses though.
- eimrine 4y ago
  I have pg's list of nine Lisp ideas [1]. What of these are missing in Janet? My guess is that only 9th one but I would like to understand Lisp (any) vs Janet point. [1] www.paulgraham.com/diff.html
  - lispm 4y ago
    LISP originally came in an implementation (LISP I) and LISP is short for List Processor. Janet looks like a really great language&implementation, but it is not similar to that specific List Processor, for example given that it does not use linked lists at its core.
    - latenightcoding 4y ago
      >> it does not use linked lists at its core does Clojure? I can implement a Scheme interpreter that passes most test suites using vectors instead of linked lists, would you not consider it a lisp?
      - lispm 4y ago
        > I can implement a scheme that passes most test suites using vectors instead of linked lists, would you not consider it a lisp? My Symbolics Lisp Machine has a Lisp implementation where some form of vectors are an optimization of lists (-> CDR coding). But that's an implementation detail. For most purposes the thing behaves as it uses linked lists - and even has primitive operators for linked lists as CPU instructions. CLISP, another Lisp implementation, has its own virtual machine, written in C. There too, CAR, CDR, CONS are primitive operations in the VM: [1]> (defun foo (list) (cons (cdr list) (car list))) FOO [2]> (disassemble #'foo) Disassembly of function FOO 1 required argument 0 optional arguments No rest parameter No keyword parameters 5 byte-code instructions: 0 (LOAD&CDR&PUSH 1) 2 (LOAD 2) 3 (CAR) 4 (CONS) 5 (SKIP&RET 2) For me Lisp means more than parentheses or some vague idea of a language "family". It's a language, a bunch of implementations which have a similar core (data structures, operators) and which share code. These languages tend to have the name 'Lisp' in their language. Then there is this meaning that Lisp is a very diverse group of languages bases on largely undefined criteria. Like C is a member of the ALGOL language family. That's the "Lisp family": It includes JavaScript/ECMAScript, Dylan, Clojure, Scheme, Racket, R, SKILL... Some have s-expressions, some not. Some use linked lists, some not. Some are object-oriented, some not. And so on. But for practical purposes it's meaningless: if I want to know about how a particular Scheme construct works, I would look into a Scheme documentation (or its particular implementation), not into a Lisp book. Scheme, Clojure, .. all have their own language family by now: there are language definitions, a bunch of similar implementations, shared code, books, ... It's also funny how people claim that language X is a Lisp, as if that would mean something "special" or even "better". There are lots of excellent and useful programming languages out there, which are not Lisp.
        4y ago
- smegsicle 4y ago
  and neither is scheme
  - proamdev123 4y ago
    Why do you say Scheme not a Lisp?
    - smegsicle 4y ago
      there's obviously a strong family resemblance, but scheme's focus on purity over practicality lends to a much different feel. one of the illustrations from this 20 year old discussion that someone linked here a bit ago [t] was that, while you might say c is a 'member of the algol family', you wouldn't say that c 'is an algol'. perhaps an extreme example, but the idea is that lisp having a history of multiple implementations doesn't make scheme one of them. put another way- while schemes extrapolate on a similar kind of purity to that which lisps are already famous for, giving them a kind of 'more lisp than lisp' aura, that shouldn't negate the language split. [t] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/Bj8Hx6mZEYI https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/Bj8Hx6mZEYI (perhaps skim kent pitman's posts for a summary)
vindarel 4y ago
Racket has mediocre interactive features or so I hear: https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1ca7ac https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1... > no condition/restart but just print you a trace, and little runtime inspector/debugger support CL really was built with interactive support from the ground up. I don't think Janet has many?
- schemescape 4y ago
  I'm curiuos about the interactivity of Janet as well. I saw that someone added support for opting into a level of indirection for resolving symbols, which would theoretically support re-defining functions interactively. There also appears to be Conjure support for editor integration. In my case, I wasn't convinced Janet would support REPL-driven programming like Common Lisp, so I decided to try CL first. I very much like the concept of Janet (a Lua-sized Lisp), but I couldn't identify a compelling reason to choose Janet over CL in my case (just some hobby projects).
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Janet has the pieces for this in the spork stdlib with netrepl combined with fibers, but there's no standard or pre-configured way to set it up. Its current approach to namespaces doesn't particularly allow for it either, so you have to choose one of a few various hacks for redefining things as you noticed. People have been asking for it and demonstrating proofs of concepts for the last year or so so it wouldn't surprise me to see it formally addressed soon. But I don't know, I don't have any particularly insight I just like that language and keep half an eye on it.
actuallyalys 4y ago
I find most of it applies to Clojure, although being a younger language there is no code from 30 years ago to run. Based on the stability I’ve seen so far, it wouldn’t shock me if the Clojure code I write today still works 30 years from now. Edit: There are some nuances of interactive support Common Lisp has that Clojure lacks, but I find Clojure supports interactive development much better than other languages.

ravi-delia 4y ago

Somewhat! The authors talk about the longevity of CL, which is less a fact about lisp than an accident of history. Janet, for instance, is obviously quite new. Elisp is quite old, but I wouldn't use it for non-emacs development. Schemes are old, and while there are lots of one-off schemes which seem to be educational projects for their developers there are also lots of very old and battle-tested dialects (Chicken scheme comes to mind, Racket is old-ish and backed by its use in education). The interactivity is fairly universal. Scheme in its smallest nuts and bolts doesn't care that much about interactivity, giving eval but no other real support for a REPL, but due to cultural effects pretty much every specific scheme is very interactive. I've seen complaints about every specific lisp I've ever used that it's not a real lisp because it doesn't support [extremely specific interactive option user integrated into their workflow in '93 and can't live without], but everything the authors talked about is likely to be present in just about every lisp.

behnamoh 4y ago

Janet is not a Lisp, it uses parentheses though.

eimrine 4y ago
I have pg's list of nine Lisp ideas [1]. What of these are missing in Janet? My guess is that only 9th one but I would like to understand Lisp (any) vs Janet point. [1] www.paulgraham.com/diff.html
- lispm 4y ago
  LISP originally came in an implementation (LISP I) and LISP is short for List Processor. Janet looks like a really great language&implementation, but it is not similar to that specific List Processor, for example given that it does not use linked lists at its core.
  - latenightcoding 4y ago
    >> it does not use linked lists at its core does Clojure? I can implement a Scheme interpreter that passes most test suites using vectors instead of linked lists, would you not consider it a lisp?
    - lispm 4y ago
      > I can implement a scheme that passes most test suites using vectors instead of linked lists, would you not consider it a lisp? My Symbolics Lisp Machine has a Lisp implementation where some form of vectors are an optimization of lists (-> CDR coding). But that's an implementation detail. For most purposes the thing behaves as it uses linked lists - and even has primitive operators for linked lists as CPU instructions. CLISP, another Lisp implementation, has its own virtual machine, written in C. There too, CAR, CDR, CONS are primitive operations in the VM: [1]> (defun foo (list) (cons (cdr list) (car list))) FOO [2]> (disassemble #'foo) Disassembly of function FOO 1 required argument 0 optional arguments No rest parameter No keyword parameters 5 byte-code instructions: 0 (LOAD&CDR&PUSH 1) 2 (LOAD 2) 3 (CAR) 4 (CONS) 5 (SKIP&RET 2) For me Lisp means more than parentheses or some vague idea of a language "family". It's a language, a bunch of implementations which have a similar core (data structures, operators) and which share code. These languages tend to have the name 'Lisp' in their language. Then there is this meaning that Lisp is a very diverse group of languages bases on largely undefined criteria. Like C is a member of the ALGOL language family. That's the "Lisp family": It includes JavaScript/ECMAScript, Dylan, Clojure, Scheme, Racket, R, SKILL... Some have s-expressions, some not. Some use linked lists, some not. Some are object-oriented, some not. And so on. But for practical purposes it's meaningless: if I want to know about how a particular Scheme construct works, I would look into a Scheme documentation (or its particular implementation), not into a Lisp book. Scheme, Clojure, .. all have their own language family by now: there are language definitions, a bunch of similar implementations, shared code, books, ... It's also funny how people claim that language X is a Lisp, as if that would mean something "special" or even "better". There are lots of excellent and useful programming languages out there, which are not Lisp.
      - 4y ago
smegsicle 4y ago
and neither is scheme
- proamdev123 4y ago
  Why do you say Scheme not a Lisp?
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    there's obviously a strong family resemblance, but scheme's focus on purity over practicality lends to a much different feel. one of the illustrations from this 20 year old discussion that someone linked here a bit ago [t] was that, while you might say c is a 'member of the algol family', you wouldn't say that c 'is an algol'. perhaps an extreme example, but the idea is that lisp having a history of multiple implementations doesn't make scheme one of them. put another way- while schemes extrapolate on a similar kind of purity to that which lisps are already famous for, giving them a kind of 'more lisp than lisp' aura, that shouldn't negate the language split. [t] https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/Bj8Hx6mZEYI https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/Bj8Hx6mZEYI (perhaps skim kent pitman's posts for a summary)

vindarel 4y ago

Racket has mediocre interactive features or so I hear: https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1ca7ac https://gist.github.com/vindarel/c1ef5e043773921e3b11d8f4fe1... > no condition/restart but just print you a trace, and little runtime inspector/debugger support CL really was built with interactive support from the ground up. I don't think Janet has many?

schemescape 4y ago
I'm curiuos about the interactivity of Janet as well. I saw that someone added support for opting into a level of indirection for resolving symbols, which would theoretically support re-defining functions interactively. There also appears to be Conjure support for editor integration. In my case, I wasn't convinced Janet would support REPL-driven programming like Common Lisp, so I decided to try CL first. I very much like the concept of Janet (a Lua-sized Lisp), but I couldn't identify a compelling reason to choose Janet over CL in my case (just some hobby projects).
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Janet has the pieces for this in the spork stdlib with netrepl combined with fibers, but there's no standard or pre-configured way to set it up. Its current approach to namespaces doesn't particularly allow for it either, so you have to choose one of a few various hacks for redefining things as you noticed. People have been asking for it and demonstrating proofs of concepts for the last year or so so it wouldn't surprise me to see it formally addressed soon. But I don't know, I don't have any particularly insight I just like that language and keep half an eye on it.

actuallyalys 4y ago

I find most of it applies to Clojure, although being a younger language there is no code from 30 years ago to run. Based on the stability I’ve seen so far, it wouldn’t shock me if the Clojure code I write today still works 30 years from now. Edit: There are some nuances of interactive support Common Lisp has that Clojure lacks, but I find Clojure supports interactive development much better than other languages.