6 ms·

JSON is not a programming language.

by haberman 17y ago

jimbokun 17y ago
Which just goes to show we still have not made all the way back to where Lisp was a few decades ago.
- haberman 17y ago
  Consider that JSON has features Lisp does not. Like a tiny implementation, very wide language interoperability, being purely a data language (sandboxed by design), and not being Turing-complete (time to interpret is automatically bounded).
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > (time to interpret is automatically bounded). Well, at least for that particular set of cases I think you've just solved the halting problem ;)
alrex021 17y ago
You are absolutely right. My point exactly. Now you need "two hammers" to get a single job done. Your current programming language of choice and a data expression language. For example: In C, C++, Java, or related, you "first" have to build you structure to represent a Person with first_name and last_name and then you have to write it to JSON: Java: class Person { String firstName; String lastName; } JSON with JavaScript evaluation: var names = [{"firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith"}, {"firstName": "Bob", "lastName": "Jones"}] eval("(" + names + ")"); Lisp handles both naturally. You don't need intermediary human-readable data expression language. It comes natural to the language itself. Lisp ver: (defvar names '((:firstName "John" :lastName "Smith") (:firstName "Bob" :lastName "Jones"))) (eval names)
- scott_s 17y ago
  Not all problems require communicating your data structure outside of the program. And I don't think it's accurate to say "Now you need." For problems where you do need to communicate data outside of the program, that's been true since the days of Fortran.
- haberman 17y ago
  > or example: In C, C++, Java, or related, you "first" have to build you structure to represent a Person with first_name and last_name Not if you're using Protocol Buffers, which is essentially a version of JSON that has "batteries included." > Lisp ver: Lisp is not the only programming language around. How am I going to consume that data from another language? Embed an entire Lisp interpreter?

JSON is not a programming language.

jimbokun 17y ago

Which just goes to show we still have not made all the way back to where Lisp was a few decades ago.

haberman 17y ago
Consider that JSON has features Lisp does not. Like a tiny implementation, very wide language interoperability, being purely a data language (sandboxed by design), and not being Turing-complete (time to interpret is automatically bounded).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > (time to interpret is automatically bounded). Well, at least for that particular set of cases I think you've just solved the halting problem ;)

alrex021 17y ago

You are absolutely right. My point exactly. Now you need "two hammers" to get a single job done. Your current programming language of choice and a data expression language. For example: In C, C++, Java, or related, you "first" have to build you structure to represent a Person with first_name and last_name and then you have to write it to JSON: Java: class Person { String firstName; String lastName; } JSON with JavaScript evaluation: var names = [{"firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith"}, {"firstName": "Bob", "lastName": "Jones"}] eval("(" + names + ")"); Lisp handles both naturally. You don't need intermediary human-readable data expression language. It comes natural to the language itself. Lisp ver: (defvar names '((:firstName "John" :lastName "Smith") (:firstName "Bob" :lastName "Jones"))) (eval names)

scott_s 17y ago
Not all problems require communicating your data structure outside of the program. And I don't think it's accurate to say "Now you need." For problems where you do need to communicate data outside of the program, that's been true since the days of Fortran.
haberman 17y ago
> or example: In C, C++, Java, or related, you "first" have to build you structure to represent a Person with first_name and last_name Not if you're using Protocol Buffers, which is essentially a version of JSON that has "batteries included." > Lisp ver: Lisp is not the only programming language around. How am I going to consume that data from another language? Embed an entire Lisp interpreter?