7 ms·

Things are a bit different now. SBCL works great nearly everywhere, Clozure CL does too, and there are more libraries that are easier to install than ever befor

Things are a bit different now. SBCL works great nearly everywhere, Clozure CL does too, and there are more libraries that are easier to install than ever before.

jgw 15y ago
As someone who is really, really new to Lisp (worked through the Little Schemer, now in Seibel's "PCL", just started learning about this QuickLisp thing that you might have heard about... ;)), I've been wondering about the whys and wherefores of the Reddit switch. Do you think that if Reddit developers were faced with the same decision today, that the progress you mention might indeed push the pendulum the other way?
- zachbeane 15y ago
  I don't know. There are still a lot of things for which CL has no well-tested, widely-used, out-of-the-box solution, and someone looking for a reason to use another system can pretty easily find it. The situation is improving, though, and will continue to improve as long as people scratch CL itches instead of switching to something else.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I agree Zach, it is a different world now. This really hit me in the article: "my choices of threaded Lisp implementations was limited to OpenMCL, and in FreeBSD it's CMUCL". As another poster mentioned, SBCL and Clozure run on many platforms providing multithreading. Obviously, your QuickLisp package manager now helps find and install useful libraries: I used to install all dependencies into each of my Common Lisp projects, which I don't do anymore. I also wonder if the Reddit team's decision might have been Clojure if Clojure had been mature when they developed Reddit. Clojure is roughly 1/3 as fast as Common Lisp and takes just 2 or 3 times the memory for a typical application (my experience) - a good alternative depending on the application.
eliben 15y ago
Yes, but the Python eco-system didn't remain standing in one place either. Lots more libraries, more stable and feature-full releases, and great support for bindings for well known libraries/frameworks/APIs all across the board, as Python has clearly emerged as the favorite hacker language for general purpose programming.
- timClicks 15y ago
  I love Python, and have noticed that its popularity is trending upwards, but I'm hesitant to upvote any thread that begins an assertion with "clearly".
- toyg 15y ago
  I wish. As mainstream as it got, it's way less deployed than java (which is used for literally everything, including mobile development), PHP, C/C++, Perl and even Ruby. It's starting to be fairly ubiquitous, thanks to hacks like jython and ironpython, but it's nowhere near being considered the "clear favourite" for anything.
  - eliben 15y ago
    Each of PHP, Perl and Ruby has their niche(s), but excluding those Python is far more popular. And the comparison with Java/C is irrelevant here since this is a different domain of languages (dynamic) we're talking about here.
    - toyg 15y ago
      You didn't say "the favorite hacker dynamic language" though :) I'm a huge Python fan, but I'm also a realist: the Python ecosystem (in terms of vendors, products, customers and professionals involved, as well as libraries and tools) is nowhere near the mainstream Java/C++/whatever-Microsoft-is-pushing-this-year. Python is not the language of choice on any mobile platform, for example; it barely registers in the humongous "enterprise" space; SDKs for most hardware devices (or anything else, really) will usually list Python as the third or fourth choice, if at all. It's doing reasonably well in scripting, automation, Linux administration, 3D and web, but that's a far cry from being a clear favorite for "general-purpose programming".
diminish 15y ago
"...On my Mac, my choices of threaded Lisp implementations was limited to OpenMCL, and in FreeBSD it's CMUCL. Because of the low-level socket and threading code we had to write, reddit would not run on my Mac, and I was always tethered to our FreeBSD development server. Not being able to program offline is a pain." Interesting choice; the reddit guy gives up Lisp for python rather than Mac desktop for a BSD/Linux desktop. I would rather do the reverse; would move where Lisp works great on client and server.

Things are a bit different now. SBCL works great nearly everywhere, Clozure CL does too, and there are more libraries that are easier to install than ever before.

jgw 15y ago

As someone who is really, really new to Lisp (worked through the Little Schemer, now in Seibel's "PCL", just started learning about this QuickLisp thing that you might have heard about... ;)), I've been wondering about the whys and wherefores of the Reddit switch. Do you think that if Reddit developers were faced with the same decision today, that the progress you mention might indeed push the pendulum the other way?

zachbeane 15y ago
I don't know. There are still a lot of things for which CL has no well-tested, widely-used, out-of-the-box solution, and someone looking for a reason to use another system can pretty easily find it. The situation is improving, though, and will continue to improve as long as people scratch CL itches instead of switching to something else.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I agree Zach, it is a different world now. This really hit me in the article: "my choices of threaded Lisp implementations was limited to OpenMCL, and in FreeBSD it's CMUCL". As another poster mentioned, SBCL and Clozure run on many platforms providing multithreading. Obviously, your QuickLisp package manager now helps find and install useful libraries: I used to install all dependencies into each of my Common Lisp projects, which I don't do anymore. I also wonder if the Reddit team's decision might have been Clojure if Clojure had been mature when they developed Reddit. Clojure is roughly 1/3 as fast as Common Lisp and takes just 2 or 3 times the memory for a typical application (my experience) - a good alternative depending on the application.

eliben 15y ago

Yes, but the Python eco-system didn't remain standing in one place either. Lots more libraries, more stable and feature-full releases, and great support for bindings for well known libraries/frameworks/APIs all across the board, as Python has clearly emerged as the favorite hacker language for general purpose programming.

timClicks 15y ago
I love Python, and have noticed that its popularity is trending upwards, but I'm hesitant to upvote any thread that begins an assertion with "clearly".
toyg 15y ago
I wish. As mainstream as it got, it's way less deployed than java (which is used for literally everything, including mobile development), PHP, C/C++, Perl and even Ruby. It's starting to be fairly ubiquitous, thanks to hacks like jython and ironpython, but it's nowhere near being considered the "clear favourite" for anything.
- eliben 15y ago
  Each of PHP, Perl and Ruby has their niche(s), but excluding those Python is far more popular. And the comparison with Java/C is irrelevant here since this is a different domain of languages (dynamic) we're talking about here.
  - toyg 15y ago
    You didn't say "the favorite hacker dynamic language" though :) I'm a huge Python fan, but I'm also a realist: the Python ecosystem (in terms of vendors, products, customers and professionals involved, as well as libraries and tools) is nowhere near the mainstream Java/C++/whatever-Microsoft-is-pushing-this-year. Python is not the language of choice on any mobile platform, for example; it barely registers in the humongous "enterprise" space; SDKs for most hardware devices (or anything else, really) will usually list Python as the third or fourth choice, if at all. It's doing reasonably well in scripting, automation, Linux administration, 3D and web, but that's a far cry from being a clear favorite for "general-purpose programming".

diminish 15y ago

"...On my Mac, my choices of threaded Lisp implementations was limited to OpenMCL, and in FreeBSD it's CMUCL. Because of the low-level socket and threading code we had to write, reddit would not run on my Mac, and I was always tethered to our FreeBSD development server. Not being able to program offline is a pain." Interesting choice; the reddit guy gives up Lisp for python rather than Mac desktop for a BSD/Linux desktop. I would rather do the reverse; would move where Lisp works great on client and server.