4 ms·

Lisp is a Chameleon

30 points by gibsonf1 18y ago

cperciva 18y ago
Lisp is a chameleon. It has survived by adapting to changes in its surroundings. I'd say that's a pretty bad analogy. Chameleons are pretty good at camouflaging themselves, but they're really not very adaptable. I'd say that chameleons are the animal equivalent to FORTRAN -- they can look like anything, but they haven't really changed. If you want a biological example of being highly adaptable, go with bacteria.
- dimitar 18y ago
  You are so right. Selection for Social Signalling Drives the Evolution of Chameleon Colour Change http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060025&ct=1 http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-docume... Chameleon. Both the real thing and the metaphor are about change in appearance to become more "socially" acceptable. Has Lisp done it the way Madonna has done it - always looking hip? Fortran while looking newer hasn't outgrown as far as I know its original purpose - numeric computation, while Lisp has been modified to be a great tool in many dynamically changing fields.
- gcheong 18y ago
  "Chameleons are pretty good at camouflaging themselves..." Perhaps it should be said that, like a chameleon, Lisp has remained pretty well hidden against the background of current languages.
  - cperciva 18y ago
    Lisp has been very successful at avoided notice, but I wouldn't say that it has done that by looking like other languages. Rather, it looks completely alien to people familiar with other languages -- but it escapes notice because it looks like a very small and unthreatening alien.
    - brlewis 18y ago
      Actually, the small and unthreatening alien went to Python. However, you're right about Lisp being different, and avoiding notice. However, that might be changing. A-list blogger Robert Scoble took notice of Scheme-based http://ourdoings.com/ http://ourdoings.com/ and has been using it: http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer?service=feed&serviceid=13e9baedf2af41dbb2c241bc2a9677ba http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer?service=feed&serviceid=... And it got a glowing review by Mike Fruchter: http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/our-doings-you-upload-moment-they.html http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/our-doings-you-upload-... Notice that the first words used to describe it, "simple and unique" also describe the language it's written in. Programming language affects programmer thinking.
mixmax 18y ago
The big question is whether in fifty years Lisp will still be a chameleon that lurks in the shadows, never quite getting out where the common people are. Like it has in the last fifty years. It's interesting to see that while Lisp is superior in many ways, it's never been widely adopted. Why is that? I'm pretty sure it's not only because of pointy haired bosses, after all they take their cues from the fancy trade rags that are written by people that would at least know about the existence of Lisp. PHP reached a wide audience without the backing of a large corporation, so that argument is probably stale. I can think of a couple of reasons: - It's different. The syntax of Lisp is unlike any other language, which might turn people off. - The Lisp community is not very beginner-friendly. Since we all start out as beginners, there will be no experts if there are no beginners. - It's fragmented. There has been a history of a number of different dialects that are almost but not quite compatible. This might be a turn-off for people actually wanting to use Lisp for production systems where stability and maintenance of the distro is paramount. - It's hard. "Lisp is the only language where you spend more time thinking than writing code" - I can't remember where the quote is from, but probably Stallmann, Raymond or PG. - There are few libraries. Even though it's the oldest language still in wide use there seems to be a lack of libraries. This is probably the main reason PHP became so popular, along with it's friendliness towards beginners. Unfortunately the (fragmented) Lisp community doesn't seem interested in addressing any of these problems, so my guess is that in fifty years Lisp will still be a minority language only used by a select few.
- cperciva 18y ago
  Lisp is the only language where you spend more time thinking than writing code That may be true for some people, but it's definitely not true for me. I'd say I spend on average 10 hours thinking for every 1 hour I spend writing code -- and I write in C.
  - wheels 18y ago
    I think the commenter meant something different from the original author. I think they meant that you spend more time thinking about how to write it in Lisp. I'd contest both points, really. First, I think if you're sufficiently comfortable in almost any language, you can translate pretty fluidly from idea to implementation. There are real differences, but they're overstated. In that respect, Lisp's "hardness" is really not being deep into the language and natively breaking problems down in a way that maps to functional languages. Second, and I think your point, is that getting to that point where you've got the problem broken down into its components is the hard part. I think there are tasks where that's true and ones where it's not, and again, that's largely language independent, though the amount of time needed for the more menial aspects does vary.
gibsonf1 18y ago
I ran into this article while researching a Lisp imap library with ssl. It ends up John Foderaro (the author of the linked article) wrote the first verson of Franz's Allegro common lisp, the allegroserve webserver (which we use and enjoy) and Post Office (the program I'm trying to find an ssl extension to). A note on the lisp community: In looking for the imap library, I also found mel-base http://www.cliki.net/mel-base http://www.cliki.net/mel-base and sent an email to their devel list and got an answer from the mel-base author, Jochen Schmidt, within about an hour to use cl+ssl (which we already use with cl-smtp to send email) I sent John Foderaro an email about ssl with Post Office (we'll see if he answers - Post office has a really nice conceptual structure to it), but I will definitely blog eventually about a Lisp library solution using IMAP with ssl, even if I have to make the extension myself. It shouldn't be too hard using cl+ssl.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
joubert 18y ago
I can't wait for the ILC2009 in March!
cellis 18y ago
Besides viaweb (aka Yahoo Store), are there any major commercial applications or websites written in this language?
- chris11 18y ago
  Orbitz has used it for awhile. See http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html. I found over 50 companies that also use it. http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/ http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/
- pg 18y ago
  ((by "cellis") (id 482420) (score 3) (sockvotes 0) (type comment) (ip "redacted") (time 1234739856) (kids (482439 482438 482436)) (text "Besides viaweb (aka Yahoo Store), are there <i>any</i> major commercial applications or websites written in this language?") (votes ((1234740917 "redacted" "redacted" up 2 ) (1234740355 "redacted" "redacted" up 1) (1234739856 "redacted" "cellis " up 0))) (parent 482242)) Depends what you count as major.
  - parenthesis 18y ago
    I like that the child ids are keyed with "kids"; but was disappointed that the parent id isn't keyed with "mom".
- parenthesis 18y ago
  ITA, InspireData, PWGL, Viaweb, news.yc, reddit (initially), ...
- zachbeane 18y ago
  http://wigflip.com http://wigflip.com is probably the best-known and highest-traffic Lisp success story!
- omouse 18y ago
  Emacs. It uses C as a base but the rest of it is all Emacs-Lisp.
- 18y ago

30 points by gibsonf1 18y ago

Lisp is a chameleon. It has survived by adapting to changes in its surroundings. I'd say that's a pretty bad analogy. Chameleons are pretty good at camouflaging themselves, but they're really not very adaptable. I'd say that chameleons are the animal equivalent to FORTRAN -- they can look like anything, but they haven't really changed. If you want a biological example of being highly adaptable, go with bacteria.

dimitar 18y ago
You are so right. Selection for Social Signalling Drives the Evolution of Chameleon Colour Change http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060025&ct=1 http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-docume... Chameleon. Both the real thing and the metaphor are about change in appearance to become more "socially" acceptable. Has Lisp done it the way Madonna has done it - always looking hip? Fortran while looking newer hasn't outgrown as far as I know its original purpose - numeric computation, while Lisp has been modified to be a great tool in many dynamically changing fields.
gcheong 18y ago
"Chameleons are pretty good at camouflaging themselves..." Perhaps it should be said that, like a chameleon, Lisp has remained pretty well hidden against the background of current languages.
- cperciva 18y ago
  Lisp has been very successful at avoided notice, but I wouldn't say that it has done that by looking like other languages. Rather, it looks completely alien to people familiar with other languages -- but it escapes notice because it looks like a very small and unthreatening alien.
  - brlewis 18y ago
    Actually, the small and unthreatening alien went to Python. However, you're right about Lisp being different, and avoiding notice. However, that might be changing. A-list blogger Robert Scoble took notice of Scheme-based http://ourdoings.com/ http://ourdoings.com/ and has been using it: http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer?service=feed&serviceid=13e9baedf2af41dbb2c241bc2a9677ba http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer?service=feed&serviceid=... And it got a glowing review by Mike Fruchter: http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/our-doings-you-upload-moment-they.html http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/01/our-doings-you-upload-... Notice that the first words used to describe it, "simple and unique" also describe the language it's written in. Programming language affects programmer thinking.

mixmax 18y ago

The big question is whether in fifty years Lisp will still be a chameleon that lurks in the shadows, never quite getting out where the common people are. Like it has in the last fifty years. It's interesting to see that while Lisp is superior in many ways, it's never been widely adopted. Why is that? I'm pretty sure it's not only because of pointy haired bosses, after all they take their cues from the fancy trade rags that are written by people that would at least know about the existence of Lisp. PHP reached a wide audience without the backing of a large corporation, so that argument is probably stale. I can think of a couple of reasons: - It's different. The syntax of Lisp is unlike any other language, which might turn people off. - The Lisp community is not very beginner-friendly. Since we all start out as beginners, there will be no experts if there are no beginners. - It's fragmented. There has been a history of a number of different dialects that are almost but not quite compatible. This might be a turn-off for people actually wanting to use Lisp for production systems where stability and maintenance of the distro is paramount. - It's hard. "Lisp is the only language where you spend more time thinking than writing code" - I can't remember where the quote is from, but probably Stallmann, Raymond or PG. - There are few libraries. Even though it's the oldest language still in wide use there seems to be a lack of libraries. This is probably the main reason PHP became so popular, along with it's friendliness towards beginners. Unfortunately the (fragmented) Lisp community doesn't seem interested in addressing any of these problems, so my guess is that in fifty years Lisp will still be a minority language only used by a select few.

cperciva 18y ago
Lisp is the only language where you spend more time thinking than writing code That may be true for some people, but it's definitely not true for me. I'd say I spend on average 10 hours thinking for every 1 hour I spend writing code -- and I write in C.
- wheels 18y ago
  I think the commenter meant something different from the original author. I think they meant that you spend more time thinking about how to write it in Lisp. I'd contest both points, really. First, I think if you're sufficiently comfortable in almost any language, you can translate pretty fluidly from idea to implementation. There are real differences, but they're overstated. In that respect, Lisp's "hardness" is really not being deep into the language and natively breaking problems down in a way that maps to functional languages. Second, and I think your point, is that getting to that point where you've got the problem broken down into its components is the hard part. I think there are tasks where that's true and ones where it's not, and again, that's largely language independent, though the amount of time needed for the more menial aspects does vary.

gibsonf1 18y ago

I ran into this article while researching a Lisp imap library with ssl. It ends up John Foderaro (the author of the linked article) wrote the first verson of Franz's Allegro common lisp, the allegroserve webserver (which we use and enjoy) and Post Office (the program I'm trying to find an ssl extension to). A note on the lisp community: In looking for the imap library, I also found mel-base http://www.cliki.net/mel-base http://www.cliki.net/mel-base and sent an email to their devel list and got an answer from the mel-base author, Jochen Schmidt, within about an hour to use cl+ssl (which we already use with cl-smtp to send email) I sent John Foderaro an email about ssl with Post Office (we'll see if he answers - Post office has a really nice conceptual structure to it), but I will definitely blog eventually about a Lisp library solution using IMAP with ssl, even if I have to make the extension myself. It shouldn't be too hard using cl+ssl.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

joubert 18y ago

I can't wait for the ILC2009 in March!

cellis 18y ago

Besides viaweb (aka Yahoo Store), are there any major commercial applications or websites written in this language?

chris11 18y ago
Orbitz has used it for awhile. See http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html. I found over 50 companies that also use it. http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/ http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/
pg 18y ago
((by "cellis") (id 482420) (score 3) (sockvotes 0) (type comment) (ip "redacted") (time 1234739856) (kids (482439 482438 482436)) (text "Besides viaweb (aka Yahoo Store), are there <i>any</i> major commercial applications or websites written in this language?") (votes ((1234740917 "redacted" "redacted" up 2 ) (1234740355 "redacted" "redacted" up 1) (1234739856 "redacted" "cellis " up 0))) (parent 482242)) Depends what you count as major.
- parenthesis 18y ago
  I like that the child ids are keyed with "kids"; but was disappointed that the parent id isn't keyed with "mom".
parenthesis 18y ago
ITA, InspireData, PWGL, Viaweb, news.yc, reddit (initially), ...
zachbeane 18y ago
http://wigflip.com http://wigflip.com is probably the best-known and highest-traffic Lisp success story!
omouse 18y ago
Emacs. It uses C as a base but the rest of it is all Emacs-Lisp.
18y ago