6 ms·

We Hate Lisp

25 points by math-dev 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
The inside-out loops of List look utterly mainstream in a world where from(177).to(448).do(i -> { ... }) is easy to implement in Java.
- dexwiz 5y ago
  I think the issue with syntax like this is that unless the compiler/language is smart enough, this syntax can be significantly slower than traditional for-loops. For-loop blocks are often scoped differently than arbitrary closures, can capture variables differently, and have different performance overheads. Prime example is JS's Array.map being much slower than a native for-loop without optimization.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Depending on how flexible should it be, it can just very well be a temporary class storing the from and to value and returning it and the final ‘do’ having a completely normal for loop inside iterating from from to to. This seems to have at most a (in Java very cheap) single plus allocation (static lambdas compile to static methods so not even that allocates in itself). So I don’t see why would this base case have any significant overhead. Of course a complete stream api will have some.
perl4ever 5y ago
The most hated language in some poll I read about was Visual Basic, so here: Dim sum For Each thing In Array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) sum = sum + thing Next
- dblbaguette 5y ago
rektide 5y ago
7 years ago, 62 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730277 11 years ago, 44 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777767
rthomas6 5y ago
In Python: sum(range(10)) In Rust: Vec![1..10].iter().reduce(|x,y| x+y)
- miniupuchaty 5y ago
  In Rust: (1..10).sum()
  - rthomas6 5y ago
    I guess that shows how new I still am at Rust...
- comonoid 5y ago
  All these languages took a lot from Lisp (especially former) and functional languages (especially latter). So it's like complaining to Newton that's his laws of mechanics are known by almost everyone these days, so Newton did nothing special.
  - rthomas6 5y ago
    I'm not complaining. I just wanted to add more languages.
- PinkMilkshake 5y ago
  In Raku: sum(1..10) (1..10).sum or just sum 1..10
  - lizmat 5y ago
    Or more generically: [+] 1..10 You can use any infix op (core or custom) to do a reduction: [*] 1..10 # 3628800 basically faculty
tabtab 5y ago
The "federated" reboot of C2 has been mostly a failure. Decentralization was a solution looking for a problem. I hope Ward reverts it back to normal. The real problem was bouncer management (riff-raff policing), something replication and decentralization can't fix because it just replicated riff-riff. Some unfortunate person or thing still had to clean it up by studying and tweezering content.
tored 5y ago
We hate the web. "This site uses features not available in older browsers."
- yellowapple 5y ago
  Which is especially frustrating seeing as how the site was once upon a time about as simple as it gets - which naturally meant that it had to be redesigned to be needlessly more complex, because reasons.
- DNied 5y ago
  Yeah, it needs Javascript to display text. No thanks, bye.
DonHopkins 5y ago
>... but didn't even do file I/O, ... whenever we try to bring one iota of our hard won and elsewhere valuable experience to Lisp programming ... Ha ha, "iota": great pun! https://github.com/g000001/MacLISP-compat/blob/master/IOTA.lisp https://github.com/g000001/MacLISP-compat/blob/master/IOTA.l... ;;; -*- LISP -*- ;;; IOTA: Macros for doing I/O correctly. ;;; Bugs/suggestions/complaints to KMP@MC [...] ;;; IOTA ;;; ;;; Mnemonic Basis: A form of Lambda for doing I/O binding. ;;; ;;; This is a LAMBDA binding macro that will open a lisp file object ;;; in such a way that it is automatically closed when the lambda binding ;;; range is exited. https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/system.html https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/system.html The following is some sample code (complete with documentation) that I found in my notes and thought might be helpful: ;;; Notes about CLI interrupts: ;;; ;;; A CLI interrupt is what happens when another job sends to yours. It is ;;; normally the case that other jobs will send directly to a user's HACTRN. ;;; If, however, Lisp is interrupted by a CLI message, it can elect to handle ;;; handle the interrupt in an arbitrary way. ;;; ;;; To define a handler, two things must be done: ;;; [1] Place the name of the handler function (function of one arg) ;;; in the variable CLI-MESSAGE. ;;; [2] Enable CLI handling with (SSTATUS CLI T) ;;; ;;; The handler should take a single argument which it probably should ignore ;;; since I have no idea what it is likely to be. ;;; ;;; The handler should open the file "CLA:" in (CLA BLOCK) mode and immediately ;;; discard the first 8 characters which will be garbage. ;;; ;;; The remainder of the stream, until a control-C or an eof, will be the text ;;; of the message sent. It may be read with TYI, READ, etc. and handled ;;; however. (eval-when (eval compile) (cond ((not (get 'iota 'version)) (load "liblsp;iota")))) (defun handle-cli-msg (ignore) (iota ((stream '((cla)) '(cla block))) (do ((i 0 (1+ i))) ((= i 8)) (tyi stream)) (do ((c (tyi stream -1) (tyi stream -1))) ((or (= c -1) (= c 3))) (format t "~&~3,'0O ~@:C~%" c c)))) ;print out chars seen (setq cli-message 'handle-cli-msg) (sstatus cli t) ; -------- (defun eval-cli-msg (ignore) ;alternate handler (iota ((stream '((cla)) '(block cla))) (do ((i 0 (1+ i))) ((= i 8)) (tyi stream)) (do ((f (read stream nil) (read stream nil))) ((null f)) (errset (eval f) nil)))) ;Quietly evaluate forms... ;; Assumes the other lisp will have EVAL-CLI-MSG as value of CLI-MESSAGE (defun eval-in-other-lisp (uname jname s-expression) (iota ((stream `((cli) ,uname ,jname) '(out ascii block))) (print s-expression stream)))
gumby 5y ago
This is hilarious: > not having the insight of Moon (whoever he was) > …the Lisp guys start talking about the elegance of lambda and cons and PeanoArithmetic Of all hackers, Dave Moon is about the least likely to want to focus on gratuitous lambdas or Peano arithmetic!
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I think the gist of the article wasn't so much hating Lisp, but hating the culture around it which is a lot of "you're doing it wrong" and feeling superior. A similar culture pervaded Smalltalk back at the commercial height of it. It's the attitude that turns people off. Something of a shame really. The lispers and Smalltalkers were their own worst enemies back in the day.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Sad. That was totally not the attitude of Smalltalkers or Interlispers when I was at PARC nor when I was MIT-AI but certainly that all predated any commercial "success". I do feel like there's much less snobbery/more inclusiveness these days. Anyone can open up a browser and start typing something executable, and there are so many sites willing to offer help.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      My experience with ParcPlace was as a customer in the 1990s, we found it a struggle to get them to listen to our boring concerns about crud and databases packaging images and whatnot.
Supermancho 5y ago
The AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming - https://wiki.c2.com/?AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming https://wiki.c2.com/?AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming has increasingly become to sound hollow or misleading, insofar as the properties and abilities described were solely found in "functional" languages of the time rather than being inherent benefits. > Most functional languages provide a nice, protected environment, somewhat like JavaLanguage. So Java, which isn't functional, provides a relatively "protected" environment. So what does "protected" mean and what does this have to do with functional languages again? > FP encourages safe ways of programming Depends on syntax and features. Only allowing one true way or providing one true api, is equivalent. > Functional programs tend to be much more terse The terseness can contain complicated subtlety. Up to the developer to read it carefully. Non-obviousness isn't a good thing and a level of verbose expression seems to be beneficial. > FP encourages quick prototyping Nope. > FP is modular in the dimension of functionality Not unique. etc etc etc The common assertions about having no-side effects are interesting because I was lured by this when I was younger. Sadly, there are always side effects, even if it's just resource usage or output to some device. The idea of limiting side effects is simple to achieve through modern language "static" functions and other mechanisms to the same degree. Has it made functional languages more popular/valuable or javascript (which has no such mechanism) less? blah blah blah.
- lmm 5y ago
  > Only allowing one true way or providing one true api, is equivalent. Only if that one true way is safe. I'd argue that hidden mutable state (which is the essence of non-functional programming) is inherently unsafe - non-threadsafe by default and, even more dangerously, confusing to the reader by default. > The terseness can contain complicated subtlety. Maybe it "can", but usually the terseness just comes from removing pointless clutter. > a level of verbose expression seems to be beneficial. Citation needed. > Sadly, there are always side effects, even if it's just resource usage or output to some device. Right, but you can isolate and control them, separate them from your business logic. > The idea of limiting side effects is simple to achieve through modern language "static" functions and other mechanisms to the same degree. No it isn't - if it were then we'd see non-functional languages that had effective control of side effects, and we don't.

25 points by math-dev 5y ago

The inside-out loops of List look utterly mainstream in a world where from(177).to(448).do(i -> { ... }) is easy to implement in Java.

dexwiz 5y ago
I think the issue with syntax like this is that unless the compiler/language is smart enough, this syntax can be significantly slower than traditional for-loops. For-loop blocks are often scoped differently than arbitrary closures, can capture variables differently, and have different performance overheads. Prime example is JS's Array.map being much slower than a native for-loop without optimization.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Depending on how flexible should it be, it can just very well be a temporary class storing the from and to value and returning it and the final ‘do’ having a completely normal for loop inside iterating from from to to. This seems to have at most a (in Java very cheap) single plus allocation (static lambdas compile to static methods so not even that allocates in itself). So I don’t see why would this base case have any significant overhead. Of course a complete stream api will have some.

perl4ever 5y ago

The most hated language in some poll I read about was Visual Basic, so here: Dim sum For Each thing In Array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) sum = sum + thing Next

dblbaguette 5y ago

rektide 5y ago

7 years ago, 62 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9730277 11 years ago, 44 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777767

rthomas6 5y ago

In Python: sum(range(10)) In Rust: Vec![1..10].iter().reduce(|x,y| x+y)

miniupuchaty 5y ago
In Rust: (1..10).sum()
- rthomas6 5y ago
  I guess that shows how new I still am at Rust...
comonoid 5y ago
All these languages took a lot from Lisp (especially former) and functional languages (especially latter). So it's like complaining to Newton that's his laws of mechanics are known by almost everyone these days, so Newton did nothing special.
- rthomas6 5y ago
  I'm not complaining. I just wanted to add more languages.
PinkMilkshake 5y ago
In Raku: sum(1..10) (1..10).sum or just sum 1..10
- lizmat 5y ago
  Or more generically: [+] 1..10 You can use any infix op (core or custom) to do a reduction: [*] 1..10 # 3628800 basically faculty

tabtab 5y ago

The "federated" reboot of C2 has been mostly a failure. Decentralization was a solution looking for a problem. I hope Ward reverts it back to normal. The real problem was bouncer management (riff-raff policing), something replication and decentralization can't fix because it just replicated riff-riff. Some unfortunate person or thing still had to clean it up by studying and tweezering content.

tored 5y ago

We hate the web. "This site uses features not available in older browsers."

yellowapple 5y ago
Which is especially frustrating seeing as how the site was once upon a time about as simple as it gets - which naturally meant that it had to be redesigned to be needlessly more complex, because reasons.
DNied 5y ago
Yeah, it needs Javascript to display text. No thanks, bye.

DonHopkins 5y ago

>... but didn't even do file I/O, ... whenever we try to bring one iota of our hard won and elsewhere valuable experience to Lisp programming ... Ha ha, "iota": great pun! https://github.com/g000001/MacLISP-compat/blob/master/IOTA.lisp https://github.com/g000001/MacLISP-compat/blob/master/IOTA.l... ;;; -*- LISP -*- ;;; IOTA: Macros for doing I/O correctly. ;;; Bugs/suggestions/complaints to KMP@MC [...] ;;; IOTA ;;; ;;; Mnemonic Basis: A form of Lambda for doing I/O binding. ;;; ;;; This is a LAMBDA binding macro that will open a lisp file object ;;; in such a way that it is automatically closed when the lambda binding ;;; range is exited. https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/system.html https://www.maclisp.info/pitmanual/system.html The following is some sample code (complete with documentation) that I found in my notes and thought might be helpful: ;;; Notes about CLI interrupts: ;;; ;;; A CLI interrupt is what happens when another job sends to yours. It is ;;; normally the case that other jobs will send directly to a user's HACTRN. ;;; If, however, Lisp is interrupted by a CLI message, it can elect to handle ;;; handle the interrupt in an arbitrary way. ;;; ;;; To define a handler, two things must be done: ;;; [1] Place the name of the handler function (function of one arg) ;;; in the variable CLI-MESSAGE. ;;; [2] Enable CLI handling with (SSTATUS CLI T) ;;; ;;; The handler should take a single argument which it probably should ignore ;;; since I have no idea what it is likely to be. ;;; ;;; The handler should open the file "CLA:" in (CLA BLOCK) mode and immediately ;;; discard the first 8 characters which will be garbage. ;;; ;;; The remainder of the stream, until a control-C or an eof, will be the text ;;; of the message sent. It may be read with TYI, READ, etc. and handled ;;; however. (eval-when (eval compile) (cond ((not (get 'iota 'version)) (load "liblsp;iota")))) (defun handle-cli-msg (ignore) (iota ((stream '((cla)) '(cla block))) (do ((i 0 (1+ i))) ((= i 8)) (tyi stream)) (do ((c (tyi stream -1) (tyi stream -1))) ((or (= c -1) (= c 3))) (format t "~&~3,'0O ~@:C~%" c c)))) ;print out chars seen (setq cli-message 'handle-cli-msg) (sstatus cli t) ; -------- (defun eval-cli-msg (ignore) ;alternate handler (iota ((stream '((cla)) '(block cla))) (do ((i 0 (1+ i))) ((= i 8)) (tyi stream)) (do ((f (read stream nil) (read stream nil))) ((null f)) (errset (eval f) nil)))) ;Quietly evaluate forms... ;; Assumes the other lisp will have EVAL-CLI-MSG as value of CLI-MESSAGE (defun eval-in-other-lisp (uname jname s-expression) (iota ((stream `((cli) ,uname ,jname) '(out ascii block))) (print s-expression stream)))

gumby 5y ago

This is hilarious: > not having the insight of Moon (whoever he was) > …the Lisp guys start talking about the elegance of lambda and cons and PeanoArithmetic Of all hackers, Dave Moon is about the least likely to want to focus on gratuitous lambdas or Peano arithmetic!

smackeyacky 5y ago
I think the gist of the article wasn't so much hating Lisp, but hating the culture around it which is a lot of "you're doing it wrong" and feeling superior. A similar culture pervaded Smalltalk back at the commercial height of it. It's the attitude that turns people off. Something of a shame really. The lispers and Smalltalkers were their own worst enemies back in the day.
- gumby 5y ago
  Sad. That was totally not the attitude of Smalltalkers or Interlispers when I was at PARC nor when I was MIT-AI but certainly that all predated any commercial "success". I do feel like there's much less snobbery/more inclusiveness these days. Anyone can open up a browser and start typing something executable, and there are so many sites willing to offer help.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    My experience with ParcPlace was as a customer in the 1990s, we found it a struggle to get them to listen to our boring concerns about crud and databases packaging images and whatnot.

Supermancho 5y ago

The AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming - https://wiki.c2.com/?AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming https://wiki.c2.com/?AdvantagesOfFunctionalProgramming has increasingly become to sound hollow or misleading, insofar as the properties and abilities described were solely found in "functional" languages of the time rather than being inherent benefits. > Most functional languages provide a nice, protected environment, somewhat like JavaLanguage. So Java, which isn't functional, provides a relatively "protected" environment. So what does "protected" mean and what does this have to do with functional languages again? > FP encourages safe ways of programming Depends on syntax and features. Only allowing one true way or providing one true api, is equivalent. > Functional programs tend to be much more terse The terseness can contain complicated subtlety. Up to the developer to read it carefully. Non-obviousness isn't a good thing and a level of verbose expression seems to be beneficial. > FP encourages quick prototyping Nope. > FP is modular in the dimension of functionality Not unique. etc etc etc The common assertions about having no-side effects are interesting because I was lured by this when I was younger. Sadly, there are always side effects, even if it's just resource usage or output to some device. The idea of limiting side effects is simple to achieve through modern language "static" functions and other mechanisms to the same degree. Has it made functional languages more popular/valuable or javascript (which has no such mechanism) less? blah blah blah.

lmm 5y ago
> Only allowing one true way or providing one true api, is equivalent. Only if that one true way is safe. I'd argue that hidden mutable state (which is the essence of non-functional programming) is inherently unsafe - non-threadsafe by default and, even more dangerously, confusing to the reader by default. > The terseness can contain complicated subtlety. Maybe it "can", but usually the terseness just comes from removing pointless clutter. > a level of verbose expression seems to be beneficial. Citation needed. > Sadly, there are always side effects, even if it's just resource usage or output to some device. Right, but you can isolate and control them, separate them from your business logic. > The idea of limiting side effects is simple to achieve through modern language "static" functions and other mechanisms to the same degree. No it isn't - if it were then we'd see non-functional languages that had effective control of side effects, and we don't.