3 ms·

Well, for one thing Clojure is not Lisp. It’s a neat language (and is informed by experiences with Lisp), but it’s a different thing.

jgalt212 2y ago
What's the biggest thing your mind that makes Clojure not Lisp?
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  eadmund probably means that Closure is not Common Lisp. Common Lispers often refer to Common Lisp as just "Lisp". This makes sense in Common Lisp circles because it's obvious which Lisp they're talking about. However, some Common Lispers will refuse to code switch[1] when around non-Common Lispers, with the implicit assertion that Common Lisp is the only true Lisp. This is, of course, just gatekeeping snobbery. When normal people say "Lisp" they're referring to a group of languages which includes Scheme, Clojure, Racket, Janet, Emacs Lisp and of course, Common Lisp, and probably a few others. To be clear, not all Common Lisp folks are like this. The vast majority are very nice people. But there are enough bad apples that you'll inevitably run into this "correction" if you discuss Lisp dialects publicly for long enough. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
  - kazinator 2y ago
    I doubt you can find a single Clojure-is-not-Lisp person who denies that McCarthy's LISP 1 and 1.5, MacLisp, BBN Lisp, Interlisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, ZetaLisp, Portable Standard Lisp, Emacs Lisp, XLisp, VAX Lisp, ISLisp, EuLisp and even AutoLISP ... are Lisp. I made a Lisp. It's not Common Lisp, yet I've never had anyone tell me it's not Lisp. I believe Clojure is better than AutoLISP. I wouldn't use McCarthy's LISP 1.5 for anything; it mainly of historic interest. But it is undeniably Lisp. "Lisp or not" is not the same thing as "good or not". It's more like "different or not". Difference is what makes certain words apply to some things and not apply to some other things. This is not some gender issue of inclusivity, like what is a woman. It has nothing to do with being nice or not. It's a technical matter of using the correct term for the things to which it applies.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      > I doubt you can find a single Clojure-is-not-Lisp person who denies that McCarthy's LISP 1 and 1.5, MacLisp, BBN Lisp, Interlisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, ZetaLisp, Portable Standard Lisp, Emacs Lisp, XLisp, VAX Lisp, ISLisp, EuLisp and even AutoLISP ... are Lisp. Please tell me you aren't making the argument that things with "Lisp" in the name are Lisps. If only Steele and Sussman had thought to call it SchemeLisp instead of just Scheme, we could have avoided this whole semantic debate. > I made a Lisp. It's not Common Lisp, yet I've never had anyone tell me it's not Lisp. Me too! I've never had anyone tell me anything about the Lisp I made, actually. > This is not some gender issue of inclusivity, like what is a woman. It has nothing to do with being nice or not. Respectfully, I disagree. Being pedantic isn't nice, and this "Lisp refers to Common Lisp" idea was explicitly about politically excluding Scheme from the community all the way back when Naggum started it[1]. > It's a technical matter of using the correct term for the things to which it applies. The problem with what you're saying is that words apply to concepts based on usage, not based on what a small group of pedants think they should apply to. De facto people apply the term "Lisp" to both Scheme and Closure, therefore the term applies. That's how the English language works, words that are widely applied to a thing are taken to mean that thing. And sometimes the meanings of words change over time because common usage changes. Like it or not, common usage moved beyond "Lisp" meaning... whatever you want it to mean. People refer to Clojure as a Lisp now. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/Bj8Hx6mZEYI[1-25-false] https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://groups.g...
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - kazinator 2y ago
        Clojure people don't know anything else, and say things like [I'm paraphrasing typical rhetoric]: "Lisp provides a functional paradigm based on operations on immutable sequences represented by persistant data structures". Their use of Lisp is not big enough to count as English mainstream. Neither is any other use of Lisp in computing. English mainstream "Lisp" is the speech artifact. When the following groups use the word "Lisp", they all mean something else: (1) hackers working in some classic Lisp; (2) Clojurians; (3) speech therapists. The Clojurian "Lisp" does not include anywhere near everything from the classic "Lisp", and vice versa. The Clojurian "Lisp" is mainly just a synonym for Clojure, and in a broader sense refers to Clojure-like dialects like ClojureScript, Babashka and such. Clojurians use the word "Lisp" because the Clojure website and documentation tells them to. If the Clojure website and documentation spelled it out that Clojure takes some ideas from Lisp, but isn't Lisp, then they wouldn't do that. The author of Clojure despises classic Lisp and Lisp hackers, so he perpetrated that on purpose, and gleefully enjoyed it when some Lisp programmers become indignant about it. Problem is, it does cause confusion. It's not as simple as these people have their "Lisp", these others have theirs, because the usage is in a very similar area. We see situations like people not wanting to try a classic Lisp because they think it's a functional language for manipulating immutable data structures due to either their exposure to Clojure or to Clojure-related advocacy. That could work the other way; people who don't like classic Lisps (e.g. passing familiarity from school years) may be reluctant to try Clojure thinking it's the same, since it calls itself Lisp! In the Perl community, calling a certain different, new language Perl 6 created confusion. So the creators did a kind thing and invented a different name: Raku. This is because they didn't despise the Perl user base; they liked Perl users and wanted to be helpful.
miroljub 2y ago
Clojure is a Lisp, precisely, a language from the List family of languages. Other known examples of Lisps are Emacs Lisp, Common Lisp and Scheme.

jgalt212 2y ago

What's the biggest thing your mind that makes Clojure not Lisp?

kerkeslager 2y ago
eadmund probably means that Closure is not Common Lisp. Common Lispers often refer to Common Lisp as just "Lisp". This makes sense in Common Lisp circles because it's obvious which Lisp they're talking about. However, some Common Lispers will refuse to code switch[1] when around non-Common Lispers, with the implicit assertion that Common Lisp is the only true Lisp. This is, of course, just gatekeeping snobbery. When normal people say "Lisp" they're referring to a group of languages which includes Scheme, Clojure, Racket, Janet, Emacs Lisp and of course, Common Lisp, and probably a few others. To be clear, not all Common Lisp folks are like this. The vast majority are very nice people. But there are enough bad apples that you'll inevitably run into this "correction" if you discuss Lisp dialects publicly for long enough. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
- kazinator 2y ago
  I doubt you can find a single Clojure-is-not-Lisp person who denies that McCarthy's LISP 1 and 1.5, MacLisp, BBN Lisp, Interlisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, ZetaLisp, Portable Standard Lisp, Emacs Lisp, XLisp, VAX Lisp, ISLisp, EuLisp and even AutoLISP ... are Lisp. I made a Lisp. It's not Common Lisp, yet I've never had anyone tell me it's not Lisp. I believe Clojure is better than AutoLISP. I wouldn't use McCarthy's LISP 1.5 for anything; it mainly of historic interest. But it is undeniably Lisp. "Lisp or not" is not the same thing as "good or not". It's more like "different or not". Difference is what makes certain words apply to some things and not apply to some other things. This is not some gender issue of inclusivity, like what is a woman. It has nothing to do with being nice or not. It's a technical matter of using the correct term for the things to which it applies.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    > I doubt you can find a single Clojure-is-not-Lisp person who denies that McCarthy's LISP 1 and 1.5, MacLisp, BBN Lisp, Interlisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, ZetaLisp, Portable Standard Lisp, Emacs Lisp, XLisp, VAX Lisp, ISLisp, EuLisp and even AutoLISP ... are Lisp. Please tell me you aren't making the argument that things with "Lisp" in the name are Lisps. If only Steele and Sussman had thought to call it SchemeLisp instead of just Scheme, we could have avoided this whole semantic debate. > I made a Lisp. It's not Common Lisp, yet I've never had anyone tell me it's not Lisp. Me too! I've never had anyone tell me anything about the Lisp I made, actually. > This is not some gender issue of inclusivity, like what is a woman. It has nothing to do with being nice or not. Respectfully, I disagree. Being pedantic isn't nice, and this "Lisp refers to Common Lisp" idea was explicitly about politically excluding Scheme from the community all the way back when Naggum started it[1]. > It's a technical matter of using the correct term for the things to which it applies. The problem with what you're saying is that words apply to concepts based on usage, not based on what a small group of pedants think they should apply to. De facto people apply the term "Lisp" to both Scheme and Closure, therefore the term applies. That's how the English language works, words that are widely applied to a thing are taken to mean that thing. And sometimes the meanings of words change over time because common usage changes. Like it or not, common usage moved beyond "Lisp" meaning... whatever you want it to mean. People refer to Clojure as a Lisp now. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/Bj8Hx6mZEYI[1-25-false] https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://groups.g...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - kazinator 2y ago
      Clojure people don't know anything else, and say things like [I'm paraphrasing typical rhetoric]: "Lisp provides a functional paradigm based on operations on immutable sequences represented by persistant data structures". Their use of Lisp is not big enough to count as English mainstream. Neither is any other use of Lisp in computing. English mainstream "Lisp" is the speech artifact. When the following groups use the word "Lisp", they all mean something else: (1) hackers working in some classic Lisp; (2) Clojurians; (3) speech therapists. The Clojurian "Lisp" does not include anywhere near everything from the classic "Lisp", and vice versa. The Clojurian "Lisp" is mainly just a synonym for Clojure, and in a broader sense refers to Clojure-like dialects like ClojureScript, Babashka and such. Clojurians use the word "Lisp" because the Clojure website and documentation tells them to. If the Clojure website and documentation spelled it out that Clojure takes some ideas from Lisp, but isn't Lisp, then they wouldn't do that. The author of Clojure despises classic Lisp and Lisp hackers, so he perpetrated that on purpose, and gleefully enjoyed it when some Lisp programmers become indignant about it. Problem is, it does cause confusion. It's not as simple as these people have their "Lisp", these others have theirs, because the usage is in a very similar area. We see situations like people not wanting to try a classic Lisp because they think it's a functional language for manipulating immutable data structures due to either their exposure to Clojure or to Clojure-related advocacy. That could work the other way; people who don't like classic Lisps (e.g. passing familiarity from school years) may be reluctant to try Clojure thinking it's the same, since it calls itself Lisp! In the Perl community, calling a certain different, new language Perl 6 created confusion. So the creators did a kind thing and invented a different name: Raku. This is because they didn't despise the Perl user base; they liked Perl users and wanted to be helpful.

miroljub 2y ago

Clojure is a Lisp, precisely, a language from the List family of languages. Other known examples of Lisps are Emacs Lisp, Common Lisp and Scheme.