8 ms·

"I could show these poor imperative programmers how their problems could be solved much easier in Lisp if I wanted to." That to me (as an outsider) seems to be

by miloshh 17y ago

"I could show these poor imperative programmers how their problems could be solved much easier in Lisp if I wanted to." That to me (as an outsider) seems to be the main message of these Lisp blogs. But at some point, nobody will believe you could do it, unless you actually do.

jerf 17y ago
You seem to be complaining that... Lisp doesn't exist? You seem to be saying his complaints are of the from "A hypothetical language I have in my head can do that better", but the complaint is of the form "This existing language does that all and better." Given that the only other "problem" in the post is a Hello World post, surely you aren't complaining that the author failed to include a "Hello World" lisp program? Well, here you go: (print "Hello World") I do not understand what you're saying at all. (Also, I'm not a lisper. In fact I'm increasingly of the opinion that it represents a wrong direction for the future of programming languages. So this is not a "pro-Lisp bias" thing.)
- miloshh 17y ago
  Well, Lisp sure does exist, and has been used to solve real world problems. But those were predominatly in applications where performance, parallelism, graphics, large matrix computations and GUIs do not matter. If you want to pick on the imperative languages (i.e. Pascal/Fortran/C/C++), you better show you can do what they can do.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    Unsubstantiated claims. Common Lisp has been embedded inside Quake II: http://ecls.sourceforge.net/ecl-in-quake2.jpg http://ecls.sourceforge.net/ecl-in-quake2.jpg That takes care of the graphics, networking, matrix manipulation and low-latency. What other FUD do you need answered?
    - miloshh 17y ago
      Nah. Using Lisp to script an engine written in C++ is not the same as writing the engine itself in Lisp. I'm not saying this is not possible, it's just that nobody tries. You might be able to do a serious graphics or high-performance computing project in Lisp. You will be the first one, and I'll be very interested in how it goes.
      - lispm 17y ago
        Many have been done. ICAD has been written in Lisp and many turbines of several commercial aircrafts have been designed with it. CDRS was the conceptual design and rendering system, written by Evans & Sutherland in Lisp. Many cars from Ford and Jaguar have been designed with it. It was then taken over by PTC and sold as Pro/Engineer Designer. Mirai is a 3d graphics tool used for example to create the animations of Gollums's face in Lord of the Rings. Earlier versions of this software have been used for animation films and many computer games, for example by Nintendo to design the 3d worlds. There were other uses of this software, for example the Orca in 'Free Willy' was animated with it. Here is a screenshot of Mirai: http://lispm.dyndns.org/lisp/pics/Mirai-P5-Paint-Front.jpg http://lispm.dyndns.org/lisp/pics/Mirai-P5-Paint-Front.jpg Let us know when there is a similar Haskell app that supports 2d+3d painting, 3d modelling, 3d animation, 3d rendering, 3d motion editing, etc. in a nice application for, say, SGIs or Windows machines - then show how to script it in Haskell at runtime.
        miloshh 17y ago
        Oh, Haskell is also not used very often for those things. It's just my (outsider) perception that Lisp programmers frequently pick on C/C++ as inferior. Haskell programmers instead ask "what can we do to make Haskell performance closer to C/C++?" However, I am doing graphics for a living, and much of it in C++. I am sincerely interested if I can use another language to give me a higher degree of productivity and not sacrifice too much performance. Common Lisp might be able to pull this off, but it certainly is not often used in this way. I think you'd agree it's more common for a Lisp person to ask "why do people still use these inferior languages?" rather than "how can we match the performance/scalability/parallelism of these other languages?".
- mmphosis 17y ago
  I tried: (print "Hello World") The result I expected was: Hello World The result I got was: "Hello World" In the language we are using, the "Hello World" program is simply: Hello World but, this is my anti-Lisp bias thing.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    Lisp "printing" is used for two different purposes: 1) to display results for a human reader/viewer. and 2) to serialize Lisp forms for later READing. Instead of print, try princ. [1]> (princ "hello world") hello world "hello world" The first unquoted string is the rendered display of the PRINT function, a side-effect. The second quoted string is the result, print returns the string it printed as a result. Try nesting them and see what happens: (princ (princ "hello world")) You admit to having an anti-lisp bias without knowing anything about lisp. This whole "I hate it because I don't know it" thing is silly and unbecoming of good programmers.
- jstraszheim 17y ago
  Just curious, what do you think is the right direction?
  - kunley 17y ago
    If Go people succeeded with taking over some C area, that would be the direction right enough, don't you think? Simply because Go seems a bit better than C. I'd love to see some modern SML or Haskell taking over the area of code compiled to binary, plus a constant growth of dynamic languages as well, because they are also cool. But that big revolution may not happen.
    - stefano 17y ago
      Probably Microsoft's F# is the modern SML with more chances to become mainstream and start that big revolution.
- pavelludiq 17y ago
  I'm curious, i rarely see any REAL[1] criticism of lisp, just the old "ughh, my eyes, all those parenthesis, aaa" type of nonsense. Why do you think its a wrong direction? [1] Im not talking about implementations, obviously, Common lisp, scheme and clojure have their problems, im talking about the general idea of lisp.
  - ekiru 17y ago
    I also feel that Lisp is a wrong direction. Its main problem is the lack of static typing. It is understandable that a language which has existed for so long with relatively little change would lack a static type system, but with as much progress as has been made in research on type systems since then, there is no good reason for a modern language to lack a powerful type system.
    - mike_organon 17y ago
      There is value in static checking for some things, but it is also limiting. It requires that code be written such that those things are declarative, can be understood without running the program. There is also value in having those things to be programmable, dynamic. This is a "good reason" even if you prefer the alternative. In Clojure, the lack of static type checking was not done out of laziness. > there is no good reason for a modern language to lack a powerful type system. Lisps can and do have powerful type systems - you're confusing dynamic with none at all.
      - ekiru 17y ago
        > There is value in static checking for some things, but it is also limiting. Other than type-safe heterogenous lists(which is only true if you hold static type systems to a much higher standard of type-safety than dynamic type systems), what sorts of things do a type system with type classes, algebraic data types, and higher order functions prevent doing? > Lisps can and do have powerful type systems - you're confusing dynamic with none at all. Common Lisp has a powerful object system and dispatch scheme, but it isn't as powerful as Haskell's type system. Type classes provide compile-time multi-methods which can be every bit as dynamic as CLOS's when needed, but which are statically checked as much as is possible. In addition, type classes make it possible to dispatch not just on argument type but also on return type. How do you write a Common Lisp function which polymorphicly converts an integer to whatever type you need? This is admittedly a bit of a weak example, but polymorphic conversions like this can probably be useful(for example, you could use it to implement a somewhat inefficient heterogenous list). In Haskell(I'm not very familiar with Haskell, but my testing indicates that this would work): class FromInt t where fromInt :: Integer -> t Haskell also has parameterized types, which aren't as needed in dynamic type systems, but that relative lack of need is only because a dynamic type systems considers a program that calls a method which doesn't work on an object's type at runtime to be type-safe. In a statically typed language with type classes and sufficiently powerful syntactic macros, it would be possible to conveniently defer to dynamic type checking in way that would type-check statically. The macros are only necessary for the convenience part. Otherwise, you'd have to create a lot of type classes for every type you wanted to use dynamically. With macros, you could just include the creation of the appropriate classes in the form that defines a new type. In fact, it could be built into the language making even macros unnecessary.
maelstrom 17y ago
Yes, if Lisp is so powerful, where are all the super programs written in it? I'm only aware of EMACs and maybe at one point Autocad? And I guess PG wrote a couple webapps with it....
- cschep 17y ago
  I think the standard argument would be that the average programmers are using average languages, so popularity is a horrible measuring stick for powerful languages.
- briancooley 17y ago
  Well, there's the stuff from ITA Software that powers Orbitz. Flightcaster is using Clojure. Impact Solutions in Houston uses Lisp for real time analysis of oil rig data. There're a lot more.
- mahmud 17y ago
  That's a logical fallacy. Something can be both great and unknown to you. Usually, you seek information about things you know you need/want, and can afford. If a topic does not interest you, you will forever remain oblivious to it, except maybe for some tangential news about it that reach you by accident. It's naive to think that just because you're a programmer you know everything there is to know about the software industry. You don't. You know about a small fraction of the mainstream development tools, and even those, at a superficial level. For example, can you name the top software products for running local elections? how about automating a chemistry research lab? packages for oil exploration? vacation property management? real-time spoken Chinese processing? computational archeology? artist talent management? threat modeling for distributed corporate networks? See? :-) "Social" programmers, the guys you see in chat rooms and "community" websites are all mostly generalists, and typically work in well defined roles as grunt programmers. Nothing fancy, website here, a database there, a GUI or two, click, generate, zip, distribute, and call it a day type work. Don't let this closed echo-system define your perception of "the software industry".
  - maelstrom 17y ago
    There should at least be one canonical example. I'm not claiming to know everything, I'm trying to fill in my knowledge. If lisp is so great, and so much more productive, and used by the greatest programmers on Earth, point me to some great code so I can become more informed. Should I start reading EMACS source? Show me the code! If there's not at least one great open source project written in lisp, I'm not inclined to take your claims prima facie.

by miloshh 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

You seem to be complaining that... Lisp doesn't exist? You seem to be saying his complaints are of the from "A hypothetical language I have in my head can do that better", but the complaint is of the form "This existing language does that all and better." Given that the only other "problem" in the post is a Hello World post, surely you aren't complaining that the author failed to include a "Hello World" lisp program? Well, here you go: (print "Hello World") I do not understand what you're saying at all. (Also, I'm not a lisper. In fact I'm increasingly of the opinion that it represents a wrong direction for the future of programming languages. So this is not a "pro-Lisp bias" thing.)

miloshh 17y ago
Well, Lisp sure does exist, and has been used to solve real world problems. But those were predominatly in applications where performance, parallelism, graphics, large matrix computations and GUIs do not matter. If you want to pick on the imperative languages (i.e. Pascal/Fortran/C/C++), you better show you can do what they can do.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Unsubstantiated claims. Common Lisp has been embedded inside Quake II: http://ecls.sourceforge.net/ecl-in-quake2.jpg http://ecls.sourceforge.net/ecl-in-quake2.jpg That takes care of the graphics, networking, matrix manipulation and low-latency. What other FUD do you need answered?
  - miloshh 17y ago
    Nah. Using Lisp to script an engine written in C++ is not the same as writing the engine itself in Lisp. I'm not saying this is not possible, it's just that nobody tries. You might be able to do a serious graphics or high-performance computing project in Lisp. You will be the first one, and I'll be very interested in how it goes.
    - lispm 17y ago
      Many have been done. ICAD has been written in Lisp and many turbines of several commercial aircrafts have been designed with it. CDRS was the conceptual design and rendering system, written by Evans & Sutherland in Lisp. Many cars from Ford and Jaguar have been designed with it. It was then taken over by PTC and sold as Pro/Engineer Designer. Mirai is a 3d graphics tool used for example to create the animations of Gollums's face in Lord of the Rings. Earlier versions of this software have been used for animation films and many computer games, for example by Nintendo to design the 3d worlds. There were other uses of this software, for example the Orca in 'Free Willy' was animated with it. Here is a screenshot of Mirai: http://lispm.dyndns.org/lisp/pics/Mirai-P5-Paint-Front.jpg http://lispm.dyndns.org/lisp/pics/Mirai-P5-Paint-Front.jpg Let us know when there is a similar Haskell app that supports 2d+3d painting, 3d modelling, 3d animation, 3d rendering, 3d motion editing, etc. in a nice application for, say, SGIs or Windows machines - then show how to script it in Haskell at runtime.
      - miloshh 17y ago
        Oh, Haskell is also not used very often for those things. It's just my (outsider) perception that Lisp programmers frequently pick on C/C++ as inferior. Haskell programmers instead ask "what can we do to make Haskell performance closer to C/C++?" However, I am doing graphics for a living, and much of it in C++. I am sincerely interested if I can use another language to give me a higher degree of productivity and not sacrifice too much performance. Common Lisp might be able to pull this off, but it certainly is not often used in this way. I think you'd agree it's more common for a Lisp person to ask "why do people still use these inferior languages?" rather than "how can we match the performance/scalability/parallelism of these other languages?".
mmphosis 17y ago
I tried: (print "Hello World") The result I expected was: Hello World The result I got was: "Hello World" In the language we are using, the "Hello World" program is simply: Hello World but, this is my anti-Lisp bias thing.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Lisp "printing" is used for two different purposes: 1) to display results for a human reader/viewer. and 2) to serialize Lisp forms for later READing. Instead of print, try princ. [1]> (princ "hello world") hello world "hello world" The first unquoted string is the rendered display of the PRINT function, a side-effect. The second quoted string is the result, print returns the string it printed as a result. Try nesting them and see what happens: (princ (princ "hello world")) You admit to having an anti-lisp bias without knowing anything about lisp. This whole "I hate it because I don't know it" thing is silly and unbecoming of good programmers.
jstraszheim 17y ago
Just curious, what do you think is the right direction?
- kunley 17y ago
  If Go people succeeded with taking over some C area, that would be the direction right enough, don't you think? Simply because Go seems a bit better than C. I'd love to see some modern SML or Haskell taking over the area of code compiled to binary, plus a constant growth of dynamic languages as well, because they are also cool. But that big revolution may not happen.
  - stefano 17y ago
    Probably Microsoft's F# is the modern SML with more chances to become mainstream and start that big revolution.
pavelludiq 17y ago
I'm curious, i rarely see any REAL[1] criticism of lisp, just the old "ughh, my eyes, all those parenthesis, aaa" type of nonsense. Why do you think its a wrong direction? [1] Im not talking about implementations, obviously, Common lisp, scheme and clojure have their problems, im talking about the general idea of lisp.
- ekiru 17y ago
  I also feel that Lisp is a wrong direction. Its main problem is the lack of static typing. It is understandable that a language which has existed for so long with relatively little change would lack a static type system, but with as much progress as has been made in research on type systems since then, there is no good reason for a modern language to lack a powerful type system.
  - mike_organon 17y ago
    There is value in static checking for some things, but it is also limiting. It requires that code be written such that those things are declarative, can be understood without running the program. There is also value in having those things to be programmable, dynamic. This is a "good reason" even if you prefer the alternative. In Clojure, the lack of static type checking was not done out of laziness. > there is no good reason for a modern language to lack a powerful type system. Lisps can and do have powerful type systems - you're confusing dynamic with none at all.
    - ekiru 17y ago
      > There is value in static checking for some things, but it is also limiting. Other than type-safe heterogenous lists(which is only true if you hold static type systems to a much higher standard of type-safety than dynamic type systems), what sorts of things do a type system with type classes, algebraic data types, and higher order functions prevent doing? > Lisps can and do have powerful type systems - you're confusing dynamic with none at all. Common Lisp has a powerful object system and dispatch scheme, but it isn't as powerful as Haskell's type system. Type classes provide compile-time multi-methods which can be every bit as dynamic as CLOS's when needed, but which are statically checked as much as is possible. In addition, type classes make it possible to dispatch not just on argument type but also on return type. How do you write a Common Lisp function which polymorphicly converts an integer to whatever type you need? This is admittedly a bit of a weak example, but polymorphic conversions like this can probably be useful(for example, you could use it to implement a somewhat inefficient heterogenous list). In Haskell(I'm not very familiar with Haskell, but my testing indicates that this would work): class FromInt t where fromInt :: Integer -> t Haskell also has parameterized types, which aren't as needed in dynamic type systems, but that relative lack of need is only because a dynamic type systems considers a program that calls a method which doesn't work on an object's type at runtime to be type-safe. In a statically typed language with type classes and sufficiently powerful syntactic macros, it would be possible to conveniently defer to dynamic type checking in way that would type-check statically. The macros are only necessary for the convenience part. Otherwise, you'd have to create a lot of type classes for every type you wanted to use dynamically. With macros, you could just include the creation of the appropriate classes in the form that defines a new type. In fact, it could be built into the language making even macros unnecessary.

maelstrom 17y ago

Yes, if Lisp is so powerful, where are all the super programs written in it? I'm only aware of EMACs and maybe at one point Autocad? And I guess PG wrote a couple webapps with it....

cschep 17y ago
I think the standard argument would be that the average programmers are using average languages, so popularity is a horrible measuring stick for powerful languages.
briancooley 17y ago
Well, there's the stuff from ITA Software that powers Orbitz. Flightcaster is using Clojure. Impact Solutions in Houston uses Lisp for real time analysis of oil rig data. There're a lot more.
mahmud 17y ago
That's a logical fallacy. Something can be both great and unknown to you. Usually, you seek information about things you know you need/want, and can afford. If a topic does not interest you, you will forever remain oblivious to it, except maybe for some tangential news about it that reach you by accident. It's naive to think that just because you're a programmer you know everything there is to know about the software industry. You don't. You know about a small fraction of the mainstream development tools, and even those, at a superficial level. For example, can you name the top software products for running local elections? how about automating a chemistry research lab? packages for oil exploration? vacation property management? real-time spoken Chinese processing? computational archeology? artist talent management? threat modeling for distributed corporate networks? See? :-) "Social" programmers, the guys you see in chat rooms and "community" websites are all mostly generalists, and typically work in well defined roles as grunt programmers. Nothing fancy, website here, a database there, a GUI or two, click, generate, zip, distribute, and call it a day type work. Don't let this closed echo-system define your perception of "the software industry".
- maelstrom 17y ago
  There should at least be one canonical example. I'm not claiming to know everything, I'm trying to fill in my knowledge. If lisp is so great, and so much more productive, and used by the greatest programmers on Earth, point me to some great code so I can become more informed. Should I start reading EMACS source? Show me the code! If there's not at least one great open source project written in lisp, I'm not inclined to take your claims prima facie.