6 ms·

Learning Lisp The Bump Free Way

tete 13y ago
I have a question to all LISPers out there. It's just, cause I really don't know. I read a bit about LISP, but never used it or anything. Anyway. Here it is: Why not Scheme?
- joshAg 13y ago
  Isn't scheme just a dialect of lisp?
  - Jacquass12321 13y ago
    Yes, it's a lighter (very minimalist) version of lisp, as opposed to common lisp. Scheme seemed like more of a fun academic exercise. If I wanted to actually do more complex work I'd probably look to common lisp instead of Scheme.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Scheme does have a feature that would be handy in Common Lisp: continuations with indefinite extent. PG has an interesting way to simulate this with macros in On Lisp, but that hardly suffices. It is not something that I frequently need, but I have had one or two cases when such a continuation would have come in handy.
  - klibertp 13y ago
    Both "Common Lisp" and various (!) Schemes are dialects of lisp. As for why CL is preferred - it's probably about the ecosystem, tools and libraries. No Scheme and very few languages can compete with CL in this matter. However there is Rachet, a Scheme that has a chance to approach CL in the next decade (only my opinion).
- minikomi 13y ago
  Piggybacking on this.. After reading SICP over the new year, I had a look into using Racket for various things, and although it seems to have an excellent, well rounded set of libraries and excellent documentation there seems to be less drive of people doing practical things with the language. Is there a glaring reason why, or is it simply lack of mindshare?
  - codygman 13y ago
    I've came to the same conclusion, and I figure that if I (well we) don't start making cool practical things then no one ever will. Of course, you do know that the Arc language is racket code right? The site you are on is using racket ;)
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  LISP (or Lisp) is a family of languages, not a single language. There are two main categories of Lisp dialects, the Lisp-1s and the Lisp-2s. Scheme is a Lisp-1. Scheme is itself not a single language; it's a subcategory of Lisps. The main Scheme standard these days is R6RS (http://www.r6rs.org/ http://www.r6rs.org/), but different implementations may or may not comply with R6RS (Racket does not, for example, even though it was formerly known as PLT Scheme). Common Lisp is the most well-known Lisp-2, and is what's generally implied when people say 'Lisp', even though that's technically a sloppy use of terminology. Clojure is another dialect, but people generally specify Clojure and Scheme by name when referring to them. There is no logic behind these nuances of the terminology and their inconsistent usage; it's just what's evolved over the last 50+ years. So, to answer your question, there's no reason why one should learn Scheme over Common Lisp (or vice versa), if all you're looking to do is learn the concepts. There are differences between the different dialects (and their many implementations), but if you're looking to expand your knowledge and not necessarily write production code, pick Scheme (using Guile) and Common Lisp (using Clisp or SBCL) and you're good to go.
  - pavelludiq 13y ago
    So, to answer your question, there's no reason why one should learn Scheme over Common Lisp (or vice versa), if all you're looking to do is learn the concepts. Once you scratch the surface, Scheme, Common Lisp and Clojure emphasize very different concepts, in some cases they even conflict in philosophy fundamentally. I'd say give all three a chance and pick a favorite. I picked Common Lisp, but that's just me.
    - zvrba 13y ago
      > Scheme, Common Lisp and Clojure emphasize very different concepts, As I discovered when I was looking for TAGBODY in scheme (don't ask; it seemed to be the most convenient way of solving the problem). Then I realized I didn't need it, I could get the same effect with internal definitions (internal function = tag) and calls. A call in tail position IS essentially a goto. (More powerful though as it also binds arguments, if any.) Scheme also looks more conceptually clean. For example, (define add +) does exactly what you think. In CL, you'd have to do something more contrived.
- kruhft 13y ago
  Because you have to write multiple-value-bind yourself, no &optional and &key parameters, no try/catch or condition system and verious other reasons. Scheme is case sensitive by default though, which I like. It's sort of like asking 'Why C++ and not C?'. It's the features or lack thereof that you have to want or not want that lead you to your initial decision. Then you switch to the other to see what you're missing. Then you make up your mind.
- dkirkman 13y ago
  There are a few good reasons that one might prefer common lisp to scheme. It has been stable for a good long time. Which is nice if you've got a giant repository of old code that you dust off and run from time to time. CL has a standard way of specifying variable types when you want to do so, so it's possible to write high performance numerical code in a portable (across different compilers) manner. Or write macros to write portable code. My view on macros is that being code transformers, when you write a macro you are basically writing a quick and dirty compiler. And like everything that's quick and dirty, they are full of bugs and gotchas. The fact that CL has separate function and value namespaces helps with decreasing the gotcha cross-section. The scheme community early on spent a lot of time dealing with this and developing hygienic macros, but as a lisper this just always felt a bit heavy. (This is probably just a lack of exposure). From my perspective, the appeal of scheme as been its more pure focus on functional programming. But when I'm in that sort of mood I just reach for haskell now.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    > It has been stable for a good long time. Which is nice if you've got a giant repository of old code that you dust off and run from time to time. I think CL is one of the few languages that I can see myself using for a decade, continuously, without having to go back and refresh pieces to conform to the latest version & compiler. Not only that, you can essentially reprogram it to keep up with advances in the field.
- tbirdz 13y ago
  Check out this article here comparing Common Lisp and Scheme. I'm not the author, but I thought it was a really helpful overview of the differences between them, and I hope it will help you all too. http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=729 http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=729
- rayiner 13y ago
  Common Lisp doesn't (like at all) hew to conceptual elegance and so has a lot more useful stuff built in: 1) CLOS for object-oriented programming; 2) LOOP as a DSL for expressing complex iteration (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html); 3) Type declarations and a compiler (CMUCL/SBCL) that can take full advantage of them; 4) Better tooling (CMUCL/SBCL + SLIME); 5) More commercial support options (Clozure, LispWorks, Allegro). R5RS doesn't even have hash tables! You can patch together alternatives for Scheme for most of those things, but the fact that they're not built-in causes problems when integrating code from multiple sources.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > R5RS doesn't even have hash tables! R6RS does, though. > You can patch together alternatives for Scheme for most of those things, but the fact that they're not built-in causes problems when integrating code from multiple sources. R6RS has a lot more built-in than R5RS.
- pnathan 13y ago
  Which Scheme? Each Scheme system appears to be slightly and definitely incompatible with the others after a point. Unlike Common Lisp, which has a well-defined standard. Unlike Clojure, which, while evolving, is at least compatible with itself.
- muuh-gnu 13y ago
  Because 1001 different Schemes exist and the code between them is not portable because the Scheme standard is so tiny. Scheme code is so hopelessly unportable,that you can not even talk about "writing Scheme". You are either writing Gauche, or Chicken, or Racket, and once you write it, your code stays in that tiny little ecosystem with not more than 10 different users each.
create_account 13y ago
Dude... the small, light gray text... are you trying to ruin our eyesight?
- doktrin 13y ago
  I don't usually complain about typography or design, but this site is an exception to that rule. It's incredibly unreadable :) The content looks good, though, but I have to admit I didn't make it through the whole thing.
- gilligan 13y ago
  Right, came here to say the exact same thing. My eyes aren't the best. First thing I did was to open chrome dev tools and fiddle in 'p { color: black }' to make it readable at all for me..
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- pavelludiq 13y ago
  I'll see what I can do about that.
- virtualwhys 13y ago
  Didn't know what was being discussed here re: readability until I realized, oh, site must have a default white background. On Linux the xcalib package is an absolute godsend, white backgrounds are like being yelled at to these eyes. Windoze has a similar screen inversion application, but cannot remember what it is right now.
- DanBC 13y ago
  I use an extension called 'change colours' in Chrome. It lets me set different background and text colours, and it allows me to change the link colours, and it allows me to change the font and font size.
- LordIllidan 13y ago
  I'm guessing he changed it - looks fine here (text is #111)
brudgers 13y ago
In regard to getting up and running in Windows, the smoothest FOSS alternative is Lispcabinet. It allows multiple Lisps to be installed (e.g. it will install Clisp, closure, and sbcl), it integrates all of them with SLIME, and installs GNUemacs along with many useful utilities. It is about as painfree as anything which requires learning Emacs can be. LispIDE is another Windows option. It is very minimal but doesn't require dealing with emacs. http://lispcabinet.sourceforge.net/ http://lispcabinet.sourceforge.net/ http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/ http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/
- pnathan 13y ago
  The big problem with libre Lisp is Emacs. I love it to death - most of my time on the computer is spent in Emacs, but a great deal of people absolutely hate it. One tool that got some love at one point was Cusp, a Lisp plugin for Emacs. Unfortunately, as I note here[1], it's been unloved for some time. [1] http://articulate-lisp.com/env:cusp-setup.html http://articulate-lisp.com/env:cusp-setup.html
  - pavelludiq 13y ago
    You meant Eclipse, obviously. But I'm not sure that is a good platform for a lisp IDE, cusp probably became abandonware for a reason. Perhaps something half usable can be done with sublime?
    - pnathan 13y ago
      Yes, Eclipse. You know, Sublime Text integration might be possible. But Eclipse is, as near as I can tell, the canonical mainstream GUI IDE. I think getting Swank(SLIME) integrated into a mainstream IDE would add to Common Lisp's usability for the non-command-line crowd by leaps and bounds. I see the computing world as fundamentally bimodal: people trend hard towards GUIs and mice or they trend hard towards CLIs and keyboards. Common Lisp's development environment is built by and for the second crowd. You might call them... hackers. :-) But I would dearly love to see the non-hacker computing world walk in the wonders of Lisp. I've attempted to teach several people Lisp, and the development environment is, hands down, the major stumbling point (after the parentheses whining is finished with). This is a major barrier to getting people onboarded. I suppose that means I should try to get Cusp/lispdev compiling this weekend and see what state its in. :-) Other barriers include no modern GUI library[1]; no popular webapp framework[2], no single point of contact for the language, and a lack of a flagship thing to raise the flag around (Ruby/Rails, Python/NumPy|Django, Clojure/not-java, etc). [1] The libraries that exist are fairly thin bindings over QT, SDL, and TK. They are far behind the sleek usability of, say, Clojure's seesaw or the even clunkiness of C# autogenerated code. [2] Clack and children are getting there
hilti 13y ago
Great start! I wish You a lot of sales. Just an idea: maybe You should present some Lisp web projects you've developed to give Your buyers an idea of what it's like to run Lisp web apps.

tete 13y ago

I have a question to all LISPers out there. It's just, cause I really don't know. I read a bit about LISP, but never used it or anything. Anyway. Here it is: Why not Scheme?

joshAg 13y ago
Isn't scheme just a dialect of lisp?
- Jacquass12321 13y ago
  Yes, it's a lighter (very minimalist) version of lisp, as opposed to common lisp. Scheme seemed like more of a fun academic exercise. If I wanted to actually do more complex work I'd probably look to common lisp instead of Scheme.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Scheme does have a feature that would be handy in Common Lisp: continuations with indefinite extent. PG has an interesting way to simulate this with macros in On Lisp, but that hardly suffices. It is not something that I frequently need, but I have had one or two cases when such a continuation would have come in handy.
- klibertp 13y ago
  Both "Common Lisp" and various (!) Schemes are dialects of lisp. As for why CL is preferred - it's probably about the ecosystem, tools and libraries. No Scheme and very few languages can compete with CL in this matter. However there is Rachet, a Scheme that has a chance to approach CL in the next decade (only my opinion).
minikomi 13y ago
Piggybacking on this.. After reading SICP over the new year, I had a look into using Racket for various things, and although it seems to have an excellent, well rounded set of libraries and excellent documentation there seems to be less drive of people doing practical things with the language. Is there a glaring reason why, or is it simply lack of mindshare?
- codygman 13y ago
  I've came to the same conclusion, and I figure that if I (well we) don't start making cool practical things then no one ever will. Of course, you do know that the Arc language is racket code right? The site you are on is using racket ;)
chimeracoder 13y ago
LISP (or Lisp) is a family of languages, not a single language. There are two main categories of Lisp dialects, the Lisp-1s and the Lisp-2s. Scheme is a Lisp-1. Scheme is itself not a single language; it's a subcategory of Lisps. The main Scheme standard these days is R6RS (http://www.r6rs.org/ http://www.r6rs.org/), but different implementations may or may not comply with R6RS (Racket does not, for example, even though it was formerly known as PLT Scheme). Common Lisp is the most well-known Lisp-2, and is what's generally implied when people say 'Lisp', even though that's technically a sloppy use of terminology. Clojure is another dialect, but people generally specify Clojure and Scheme by name when referring to them. There is no logic behind these nuances of the terminology and their inconsistent usage; it's just what's evolved over the last 50+ years. So, to answer your question, there's no reason why one should learn Scheme over Common Lisp (or vice versa), if all you're looking to do is learn the concepts. There are differences between the different dialects (and their many implementations), but if you're looking to expand your knowledge and not necessarily write production code, pick Scheme (using Guile) and Common Lisp (using Clisp or SBCL) and you're good to go.
- pavelludiq 13y ago
  So, to answer your question, there's no reason why one should learn Scheme over Common Lisp (or vice versa), if all you're looking to do is learn the concepts. Once you scratch the surface, Scheme, Common Lisp and Clojure emphasize very different concepts, in some cases they even conflict in philosophy fundamentally. I'd say give all three a chance and pick a favorite. I picked Common Lisp, but that's just me.
  - zvrba 13y ago
    > Scheme, Common Lisp and Clojure emphasize very different concepts, As I discovered when I was looking for TAGBODY in scheme (don't ask; it seemed to be the most convenient way of solving the problem). Then I realized I didn't need it, I could get the same effect with internal definitions (internal function = tag) and calls. A call in tail position IS essentially a goto. (More powerful though as it also binds arguments, if any.) Scheme also looks more conceptually clean. For example, (define add +) does exactly what you think. In CL, you'd have to do something more contrived.
kruhft 13y ago
Because you have to write multiple-value-bind yourself, no &optional and &key parameters, no try/catch or condition system and verious other reasons. Scheme is case sensitive by default though, which I like. It's sort of like asking 'Why C++ and not C?'. It's the features or lack thereof that you have to want or not want that lead you to your initial decision. Then you switch to the other to see what you're missing. Then you make up your mind.
dkirkman 13y ago
There are a few good reasons that one might prefer common lisp to scheme. It has been stable for a good long time. Which is nice if you've got a giant repository of old code that you dust off and run from time to time. CL has a standard way of specifying variable types when you want to do so, so it's possible to write high performance numerical code in a portable (across different compilers) manner. Or write macros to write portable code. My view on macros is that being code transformers, when you write a macro you are basically writing a quick and dirty compiler. And like everything that's quick and dirty, they are full of bugs and gotchas. The fact that CL has separate function and value namespaces helps with decreasing the gotcha cross-section. The scheme community early on spent a lot of time dealing with this and developing hygienic macros, but as a lisper this just always felt a bit heavy. (This is probably just a lack of exposure). From my perspective, the appeal of scheme as been its more pure focus on functional programming. But when I'm in that sort of mood I just reach for haskell now.
- pnathan 13y ago
  > It has been stable for a good long time. Which is nice if you've got a giant repository of old code that you dust off and run from time to time. I think CL is one of the few languages that I can see myself using for a decade, continuously, without having to go back and refresh pieces to conform to the latest version & compiler. Not only that, you can essentially reprogram it to keep up with advances in the field.
tbirdz 13y ago
Check out this article here comparing Common Lisp and Scheme. I'm not the author, but I thought it was a really helpful overview of the differences between them, and I hope it will help you all too. http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=729 http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=729
rayiner 13y ago
Common Lisp doesn't (like at all) hew to conceptual elegance and so has a lot more useful stuff built in: 1) CLOS for object-oriented programming; 2) LOOP as a DSL for expressing complex iteration (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/loop-for-black-belts.html); 3) Type declarations and a compiler (CMUCL/SBCL) that can take full advantage of them; 4) Better tooling (CMUCL/SBCL + SLIME); 5) More commercial support options (Clozure, LispWorks, Allegro). R5RS doesn't even have hash tables! You can patch together alternatives for Scheme for most of those things, but the fact that they're not built-in causes problems when integrating code from multiple sources.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > R5RS doesn't even have hash tables! R6RS does, though. > You can patch together alternatives for Scheme for most of those things, but the fact that they're not built-in causes problems when integrating code from multiple sources. R6RS has a lot more built-in than R5RS.
pnathan 13y ago
Which Scheme? Each Scheme system appears to be slightly and definitely incompatible with the others after a point. Unlike Common Lisp, which has a well-defined standard. Unlike Clojure, which, while evolving, is at least compatible with itself.
muuh-gnu 13y ago
Because 1001 different Schemes exist and the code between them is not portable because the Scheme standard is so tiny. Scheme code is so hopelessly unportable,that you can not even talk about "writing Scheme". You are either writing Gauche, or Chicken, or Racket, and once you write it, your code stays in that tiny little ecosystem with not more than 10 different users each.

create_account 13y ago

Dude... the small, light gray text... are you trying to ruin our eyesight?

doktrin 13y ago
I don't usually complain about typography or design, but this site is an exception to that rule. It's incredibly unreadable :) The content looks good, though, but I have to admit I didn't make it through the whole thing.
gilligan 13y ago
Right, came here to say the exact same thing. My eyes aren't the best. First thing I did was to open chrome dev tools and fiddle in 'p { color: black }' to make it readable at all for me..
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
pavelludiq 13y ago
I'll see what I can do about that.
virtualwhys 13y ago
Didn't know what was being discussed here re: readability until I realized, oh, site must have a default white background. On Linux the xcalib package is an absolute godsend, white backgrounds are like being yelled at to these eyes. Windoze has a similar screen inversion application, but cannot remember what it is right now.
DanBC 13y ago
I use an extension called 'change colours' in Chrome. It lets me set different background and text colours, and it allows me to change the link colours, and it allows me to change the font and font size.
LordIllidan 13y ago
I'm guessing he changed it - looks fine here (text is #111)

brudgers 13y ago

In regard to getting up and running in Windows, the smoothest FOSS alternative is Lispcabinet. It allows multiple Lisps to be installed (e.g. it will install Clisp, closure, and sbcl), it integrates all of them with SLIME, and installs GNUemacs along with many useful utilities. It is about as painfree as anything which requires learning Emacs can be. LispIDE is another Windows option. It is very minimal but doesn't require dealing with emacs. http://lispcabinet.sourceforge.net/ http://lispcabinet.sourceforge.net/ http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/ http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/

pnathan 13y ago
The big problem with libre Lisp is Emacs. I love it to death - most of my time on the computer is spent in Emacs, but a great deal of people absolutely hate it. One tool that got some love at one point was Cusp, a Lisp plugin for Emacs. Unfortunately, as I note here[1], it's been unloved for some time. [1] http://articulate-lisp.com/env:cusp-setup.html http://articulate-lisp.com/env:cusp-setup.html
- pavelludiq 13y ago
  You meant Eclipse, obviously. But I'm not sure that is a good platform for a lisp IDE, cusp probably became abandonware for a reason. Perhaps something half usable can be done with sublime?
  - pnathan 13y ago
    Yes, Eclipse. You know, Sublime Text integration might be possible. But Eclipse is, as near as I can tell, the canonical mainstream GUI IDE. I think getting Swank(SLIME) integrated into a mainstream IDE would add to Common Lisp's usability for the non-command-line crowd by leaps and bounds. I see the computing world as fundamentally bimodal: people trend hard towards GUIs and mice or they trend hard towards CLIs and keyboards. Common Lisp's development environment is built by and for the second crowd. You might call them... hackers. :-) But I would dearly love to see the non-hacker computing world walk in the wonders of Lisp. I've attempted to teach several people Lisp, and the development environment is, hands down, the major stumbling point (after the parentheses whining is finished with). This is a major barrier to getting people onboarded. I suppose that means I should try to get Cusp/lispdev compiling this weekend and see what state its in. :-) Other barriers include no modern GUI library[1]; no popular webapp framework[2], no single point of contact for the language, and a lack of a flagship thing to raise the flag around (Ruby/Rails, Python/NumPy|Django, Clojure/not-java, etc). [1] The libraries that exist are fairly thin bindings over QT, SDL, and TK. They are far behind the sleek usability of, say, Clojure's seesaw or the even clunkiness of C# autogenerated code. [2] Clack and children are getting there

hilti 13y ago

Great start! I wish You a lot of sales. Just an idea: maybe You should present some Lisp web projects you've developed to give Your buyers an idea of what it's like to run Lisp web apps.