4 ms·

If it gives such a productivity boost, why aren't LISP shops outcompeting other languages?

lisper 3y ago
That's a good question without an easy answer, but there are two leading theories. One is that languages are infrastructure and it's really hard to replace infrastructure once it gets established (look at how much time it's taking for electric cars to replace gas-powered ones). The other is that Lisp's productivity boost allows individuals to get things done by themselves and so it tends to attract people who aren't good at collaborating (the famous "Lisp curse"). So on an individual level it's a win, but at an organizational level it might not be unless you manage it very carefully.
- leetrout 3y ago
  > So on an individual level it's a win, but at an organizational level it might not be unless you manage it very carefully. This is why I choose Go many times over other languages. Its a bit easy to keep on the rails since it is so restrictive (at the cost of repetitive, explicit verbosity).
fidotron 3y ago
Historically I think there's a very strong case that Symbolics did outperform others with their software productivity, especially in graphics. They had an ability to wade into certain domains and produce legitimately shockingly competitive products, which really should not have been possible. But I also think Lisp leads to spectacular burnout as I think it imposes a greater cognitive requirement on the part of the developer. A Symbolics graphics reel from 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4HXPJtym2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4HXPJtym2Q This stuff was still in use on Final Fantasy 7 https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-computers-used-to-do-3d-animation?s=r https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-computers-used-to-do-3d-a...
- kagevf 3y ago
  > it imposes a greater cognitive requirement on the part of the developer ... because of the "monotonous" syntax? That was a reason mentioned by L Peter Deutsch in Coders at Work ...
  - fidotron 3y ago
    I do think it's the relatively superficial uniformity of it, regardless of the level of abstraction at which you're operating, which eventually makes things crack. My hunch is top performing lisp devs are capable of holding more of this in their head at once than mere mortals. A key benefit of more conventional languages is you can limit the scope of your concerns and reasoning (within limits), however, that does prevent you from being able to make whole system optimisations, which is notably what Symbolics (at least in graphics) were outperforming everyone else at. What the Symbolics devs achieved seems to me only viable by having an unusually capable team focused on a specific domain for a long time, without too much diversion/distraction. The bus factor must have been horrific. This thread made me go off and look more into this, and I couldn't help thinking the software industry has really lost something with the commercial failure of these very deeply specialised and incredibly high end tools. (ICAD was the other). It's odd how people could justify spending huge amounts on the hardware just to run the software, but didn't want to pay for the software when it became possible to run it on just about anything, and so the software stops being developed.
    - kagevf 3y ago
      > It's odd how people could justify spending huge amounts on the hardware just to run the software, but didn't want to pay for the software I wonder if the difference between capital expenditure vs operation expense was an influence . . .
    - kaveh808 3y ago
      In some small way I am revisiting the idea with https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 We'll see what comes of it.
- 3y ago

That's a good question without an easy answer, but there are two leading theories. One is that languages are infrastructure and it's really hard to replace infrastructure once it gets established (look at how much time it's taking for electric cars to replace gas-powered ones). The other is that Lisp's productivity boost allows individuals to get things done by themselves and so it tends to attract people who aren't good at collaborating (the famous "Lisp curse"). So on an individual level it's a win, but at an organizational level it might not be unless you manage it very carefully.

leetrout 3y ago
> So on an individual level it's a win, but at an organizational level it might not be unless you manage it very carefully. This is why I choose Go many times over other languages. Its a bit easy to keep on the rails since it is so restrictive (at the cost of repetitive, explicit verbosity).

fidotron 3y ago

Historically I think there's a very strong case that Symbolics did outperform others with their software productivity, especially in graphics. They had an ability to wade into certain domains and produce legitimately shockingly competitive products, which really should not have been possible. But I also think Lisp leads to spectacular burnout as I think it imposes a greater cognitive requirement on the part of the developer. A Symbolics graphics reel from 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4HXPJtym2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4HXPJtym2Q This stuff was still in use on Final Fantasy 7 https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-computers-used-to-do-3d-animation?s=r https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-computers-used-to-do-3d-a...

kagevf 3y ago
> it imposes a greater cognitive requirement on the part of the developer ... because of the "monotonous" syntax? That was a reason mentioned by L Peter Deutsch in Coders at Work ...
- fidotron 3y ago
  I do think it's the relatively superficial uniformity of it, regardless of the level of abstraction at which you're operating, which eventually makes things crack. My hunch is top performing lisp devs are capable of holding more of this in their head at once than mere mortals. A key benefit of more conventional languages is you can limit the scope of your concerns and reasoning (within limits), however, that does prevent you from being able to make whole system optimisations, which is notably what Symbolics (at least in graphics) were outperforming everyone else at. What the Symbolics devs achieved seems to me only viable by having an unusually capable team focused on a specific domain for a long time, without too much diversion/distraction. The bus factor must have been horrific. This thread made me go off and look more into this, and I couldn't help thinking the software industry has really lost something with the commercial failure of these very deeply specialised and incredibly high end tools. (ICAD was the other). It's odd how people could justify spending huge amounts on the hardware just to run the software, but didn't want to pay for the software when it became possible to run it on just about anything, and so the software stops being developed.
  - kagevf 3y ago
    > It's odd how people could justify spending huge amounts on the hardware just to run the software, but didn't want to pay for the software I wonder if the difference between capital expenditure vs operation expense was an influence . . .
  - kaveh808 3y ago
    In some small way I am revisiting the idea with https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 https://github.com/kaveh808/kons-9 We'll see what comes of it.
3y ago