3 ms·

Clearly you have never met a tool which afterwards made you regard all other supposedly similar tools as stone knives and bearskins. Perhaps this day is still i

Clearly you have never met a tool which afterwards made you regard all other supposedly similar tools as stone knives and bearskins. Perhaps this day is still in store for you. For the sake of your career as a programmer (assuming this is your trade), you'd better hope not.

weavejester 18y ago
You're correct that I haven't come across such a tool. But I have also programmed in Lisp, and whilst I like it a lot, I don't consider it the pariah of programming languages as you seem to do. What makes you believe Lisp is so superior to other classes of programming language? For instance, what makes a Lisp superior to a stack-based language like Forth or Factor?
- sharkbrainguy 18y ago
  This isn't meant to refute your argument or insult anyone I just that pariah probably doesn't mean what you think it means and you might like to know. From Wiktionary: 1. An outcast 2. A demographic group, species, or community that is generally despised. 3. Someone in exile 4. A member of one of the oppressed social castes in India.
  - weavejester 18y ago
    Dammit, what was the word I was thinking about then? Thanks for correcting me :)
    - gojomo 18y ago
      Probably paragon. Maybe pinnacle or nonpariel.
      - weavejester 18y ago
        I think I might have been mixing up paragon and messiah.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- asciilifeform 18y ago
  > What makes you believe Lisp is so superior to other classes of programming language? Because I feel straightjacketed whenever I cannot redefine my language on a whim in every conceivable way, or am forced to write a whit of boilerplate. (Yes, none of the existing Lisps fully meet this ideal, but nothing else comes close.)
  - weavejester 18y ago
    Hold on. Why is a stack based language any less able to do that? If anything, it's closer to your ideal, as it has less inherent syntax than Lisp. And for that matter, why do you think Clojure is so awful? It has no reader macros, true, but it does provide a more succinct way of writing hashes and vectors than most other lisps. Other than that, well, it's a Lisp.
    - asciilifeform 18y ago
      > Why is a stack based language any less able to do that? Having to juggle the stack at every step (i.e. FORTH) is a mental burden. It forces you to organize your thoughts in a certain - not necessarily harmful - but very specific way. > Other than that, well, it's a Lisp A Lisp unworthy of the name; one which encourages users to pepper their code with opaque routines which have no underlying Lispiness. A Lisp which barfs Java stack traces.
      - weavejester 18y ago
        Forgive my bluntness, but I was rather hoping to peel back the emotive language and ideological rhetoric and have an objective and technical discussion. I gauge programming languages by their effectiveness at solving practical problems. Do you believe Clojure's design makes it less effective at solving problems than other Lisps? Or are your objections to it purely ideological?
        asciilifeform 18y ago
        Yes, Clojure is less effective than other Lisps. And Symbolics Genera remains my standard of comparison. You cannot un-create it. The standard of comparison for a technology will always be everything previously achieved by mankind, rather than what is available on the market today. Bu I will try to explain my real objections. "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." (G. H. Hardy) I was drawn into programming at an early age because it seemed beautiful and allowed me to run wild with creative ideas. Thus I insist on systems with a purely minimal amount of accidental complexity - so as to leave the most room in my head for the ideas I am trying to put into practice. I have zero interest in "programming as construction work" - implementing the ideas of others, or for that matter doing anything which isn't in some important sense original. Thus I want my programming environment to resemble pure mathematics, where absolutely nothing is present for which there is not an ironclad and inevitable logical reason, where everything is open to question, and the answer is never "because the drunken intern wrote it that way five years ago." Most of the "practical problems" programmers supposedly "solve" shouldn't even exist. They are created through the idiocy of other programmers. In particular, I am talking about any situation where the output of one program requires "glue" to match the input requirements of another; or any situation where formats are converted; and many other cases. If the moronic mistakes of the past four decades were undone, most of the people who are calling themselves programmers would have to find honest work. Screw "practicality." Programmers are the proverbial firemen who start fires when they aren't at the station-house, and gloriously put them out, hailed as heroes every time. Clojure will never be beautiful because it promotes the use of undigestable foreign matter in Lisp code: primitives on which you cannot pop the hood to reveal more Lisp, with turtles all the way down. Its claim to the name Lisp is in an important sense fraudulent. I rest my case.

weavejester 18y ago

You're correct that I haven't come across such a tool. But I have also programmed in Lisp, and whilst I like it a lot, I don't consider it the pariah of programming languages as you seem to do. What makes you believe Lisp is so superior to other classes of programming language? For instance, what makes a Lisp superior to a stack-based language like Forth or Factor?

sharkbrainguy 18y ago
This isn't meant to refute your argument or insult anyone I just that pariah probably doesn't mean what you think it means and you might like to know. From Wiktionary: 1. An outcast 2. A demographic group, species, or community that is generally despised. 3. Someone in exile 4. A member of one of the oppressed social castes in India.
- weavejester 18y ago
  Dammit, what was the word I was thinking about then? Thanks for correcting me :)
  - gojomo 18y ago
    Probably paragon. Maybe pinnacle or nonpariel.
    - weavejester 18y ago
      I think I might have been mixing up paragon and messiah.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
asciilifeform 18y ago
> What makes you believe Lisp is so superior to other classes of programming language? Because I feel straightjacketed whenever I cannot redefine my language on a whim in every conceivable way, or am forced to write a whit of boilerplate. (Yes, none of the existing Lisps fully meet this ideal, but nothing else comes close.)
- weavejester 18y ago
  Hold on. Why is a stack based language any less able to do that? If anything, it's closer to your ideal, as it has less inherent syntax than Lisp. And for that matter, why do you think Clojure is so awful? It has no reader macros, true, but it does provide a more succinct way of writing hashes and vectors than most other lisps. Other than that, well, it's a Lisp.
  - asciilifeform 18y ago
    > Why is a stack based language any less able to do that? Having to juggle the stack at every step (i.e. FORTH) is a mental burden. It forces you to organize your thoughts in a certain - not necessarily harmful - but very specific way. > Other than that, well, it's a Lisp A Lisp unworthy of the name; one which encourages users to pepper their code with opaque routines which have no underlying Lispiness. A Lisp which barfs Java stack traces.
    - weavejester 18y ago
      Forgive my bluntness, but I was rather hoping to peel back the emotive language and ideological rhetoric and have an objective and technical discussion. I gauge programming languages by their effectiveness at solving practical problems. Do you believe Clojure's design makes it less effective at solving problems than other Lisps? Or are your objections to it purely ideological?
      - asciilifeform 18y ago
        Yes, Clojure is less effective than other Lisps. And Symbolics Genera remains my standard of comparison. You cannot un-create it. The standard of comparison for a technology will always be everything previously achieved by mankind, rather than what is available on the market today. Bu I will try to explain my real objections. "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." (G. H. Hardy) I was drawn into programming at an early age because it seemed beautiful and allowed me to run wild with creative ideas. Thus I insist on systems with a purely minimal amount of accidental complexity - so as to leave the most room in my head for the ideas I am trying to put into practice. I have zero interest in "programming as construction work" - implementing the ideas of others, or for that matter doing anything which isn't in some important sense original. Thus I want my programming environment to resemble pure mathematics, where absolutely nothing is present for which there is not an ironclad and inevitable logical reason, where everything is open to question, and the answer is never "because the drunken intern wrote it that way five years ago." Most of the "practical problems" programmers supposedly "solve" shouldn't even exist. They are created through the idiocy of other programmers. In particular, I am talking about any situation where the output of one program requires "glue" to match the input requirements of another; or any situation where formats are converted; and many other cases. If the moronic mistakes of the past four decades were undone, most of the people who are calling themselves programmers would have to find honest work. Screw "practicality." Programmers are the proverbial firemen who start fires when they aren't at the station-house, and gloriously put them out, hailed as heroes every time. Clojure will never be beautiful because it promotes the use of undigestable foreign matter in Lisp code: primitives on which you cannot pop the hood to reveal more Lisp, with turtles all the way down. Its claim to the name Lisp is in an important sense fraudulent. I rest my case.