How I lost my faith in Lisp

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6f75cfb5a289d3f6?pli=1

by deepu_256 • 15 years ago

183 65 15 years ago

groups.google.com

Markku6• 15 years ago

TLDR Person found out other people can be immensely productive with other languages. Then person learned languages X, Y and Z with cool libraries and is now very productive and happy using them.

TLDR TLDR Libraries make a big difference!

Markku6• 15 years ago

To add some detail.

Programming languages live and die by their libraries, i.e. vocabulary. The differences in grammar are in my opinion rather small, when we talk about how expressive a clever programmer can be. Can a person be even more expressive in Lisp? Perhaps but it's not essential. The library support on the other hand is essential. You want to stand on the shoulders of giants for the next step. In all modern languages you can write elaborate, expressive libraries (read DSLs) for your pet problems.

I think my TLDR summarizes the original author's post but if someone disagrees, then we can have a fruitful discussion :)

Disclaimer I use Java and Racket daily.

nostrademons3• 15 years ago

I actually don't think that's the point of the article - it may be true, but it's not supported by the text or background story. This was written in 2002, and the author's tenure at Google was 2000-2001. That was pre-BigTable, I think it was pre-MapReduce, and it may even have been pre-GFS. Plus, Google's known for it's NIH syndrome - while there are a fair number of third-party libraries in use now, there weren't really in Google's codebase of 2000, which had just dumped many of the early frameworks they'd used for prototypes.

Rather, I think this is more evidence of the old "Good programmers will be productive in any language." The advantage that an expressive programming language like Lisp gives you is that it frees you to think about the problem domain and not worry too much about the details of the machine. However, if you're skilled enough that you've pushed those details into unconscious muscle memory, they don't matter anyway. And a language like C++ gives you the option of dropping down to the bare metal if the need arises.

There are a fair number of Lispisms in early Google code - MapReduce is the obvious one, and there're others that I'm not at liberty to discuss. However, they're Lispisms implemented in C++, where the author took the concept and transplanted them into a language that could give the efficiency needed. This is not a bad strategy - when you understand the concept fully, you're free to tweak it and adapt it exactly as necessary for your problem.

Perhaps not coincidentally, many early Googlers were also programming language & compiler guys before Google. Urs Hoezle (employee #9 and Google's first VP) had previously done StrongTalk (statically-typed SmallTalk), Self (the prototypical prototype-based language and an early inspiration for JavaScript), and the VM that later became Java HotSpot. Jeff Dean got his Ph.D on the Cecil/Vortex compiler, one of the first optimized implementations of CLOS-like multimethods. Rob Pike worked on Plan9 at Bell Labs and invented the Limbo programming language as part of it.

Silhouette2• 15 years ago

I think I half-agree with you. I don't think a great library can ever elevate an OK language to great. However, a poor library can certainly drag an OK language down to poor.

One of the most complicated decisions in developing any new programming language today must surely be where to draw the line separating standard library facilities from those to be provided externally. Provide too little, and you get a zillion incompatible external implementations popping up (C++ and strings; JavaScript and DOM manipulations). On the other hand, go too far, and you get your entire community relying on mediocre facilities, or worse, multiple competing facilities in your own standard (Java and GUIs; D in general). Likewise, if you have a common repository for additional libraries, you can be too restrictive on contributions and wind up with many basics still not covered (C++ and Boost) or you can be too open and wind up with a whole load of substandard or incomplete junk (Perl and CPAN).

thesz• 15 years ago

I think that ease to create libraries is the key here.

I should point that the existence of specific libraries can be seen as a library creation with zero effort. So heavy-library-weight Java can be seen as a very productive language, but only when you use already created libs.

The difference between languages shows when you're on your own, when there's no library or tool under your hand. When you cannot find a giant to stand on his shoulders.

ubernostrum• 15 years ago

Honestly, I'll probably get crucified for this, but:

tl;dr it's possible to be a Blub programmer in Lisp.

Markku6• 15 years ago

If we consider libraries part of the language, then I would say yes. All lisp implementations lack something for someone. And a language with great libraries may appear to be higher than others in some perspective because they offer a set of great existing tools. As far as limiting your thinking, Lisp in itself does no such thing, the libraries do it.

As a thought, I have sometimes wondered, why is it difficult for me to do something in Racket? It is not because a library is missing (though it could happen), but because it does not limit me. So it does not guide my thinking as much as let's say a strict language like Java.

When I don't have to think about classes with single inheritance and single-dispatch methods, I start to think about class systems, generic methods, multiple dispatch, may ditch classes altogether, go to a great unified graph of data or something crazier. I end up thinking how I should be modeling something and not doing the modeling itself. It does go overboard sometimes :)

Does anybody else face this problem?

kleiba• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, the post spends most of its length on the author's professional history. It is only towards the end in which he spends a sentence or two talking about when he "lost his faith" in Lisp, but still gives not a lot of reasons. Basically, as far as I can tell, there are two major points: he used to think Lisp is great, but (1) no-one else seems to be using it and (2) the perceived superiority of Lisp was debunked when he observed experts in other programming languages.

Perhaps his priors were a bit off (seeing Lisp as the holy grail of all programming languages), but I think it is still fair to ask why Lisp has failed commercially? This has been discussed before, however (Lisp "wars" in the 80s, AI winter, etc.)

I find the way he ends his post interesting, where he argues that Lips has to evolve and improve. The article is from 2002 and in the mean time, a lot has actually happened in the Lisp world. New dialects like arc and clojure have created a renewed interest in Lisps. It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

civil• 15 years ago

It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

"Erann Gat" and "Ron Garret" are the same person; you find him on c.l.l. regularly since 2004.

nostrademons3• 15 years ago

He's also occasionally on Hacker News:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper

nipra• 15 years ago

http://www.flownet.com/gat/eg-rg-faq.html

brlewis7• 15 years ago

I think you summarized his reasons correctly, but I see his reasons as faulty.

(1) assumes that if a technology is good, it will see steady adoption over time. This is not true. See "Why didn't the Romans have hot air ballons" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2264998

About (2) I want to phrase my criticism carefully. To be clear, I'm not saying that Ron is a generally egotistical person, any more than your typical programmer, or than myself. What I am saying is that (2) is an egotistical line of reasoning. It's akin to seeing someone take a better picture with a cheap camera than you take with your expensive one, and losing faith in expensive cameras. Or like listening to someone make a song sound better on an upright piano than you make it sound on a grand piano. The Python programmers who knocked him off his high horse at Google are not proof that Python is better.

lisper7• 15 years ago

> (2) is an egotistical line of reasoning.

To be fair, at the time that reasoning was supported by a fair amount of data. To that point I had built a fairly successful career by doing (by my perception) very little work relative to my peers, and I ascribed that success to the leverage I got from using Lisp. I may have been wrong, but it was a defensible position given the available data at the time.

lisper7• 15 years ago

> It would be interesting to know what the author thinks of these developments, and whether they could revive his personal faith.

I am very encouraged by the developments of the last 9 years. Clojure in particular is a Good Thing (notwithstanding my on-going allergy to Java), and even the Common Lisp landscape to day is much improved over what it was in 2002. Clozure Common Lisp in particular is wicked cool, and I'm using it for some hacking projects on the side. But when it comes time to do something industrial strength it would still be a very tough call for me even today.

I would love to do a Lisp-based startup, and a CL based startup in particular. If anyone out there shares this interest please let me know.

biot• 15 years ago

Update from 2008: http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang...

itsadok• 15 years ago

Pervious discussion on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107683

mcn• 15 years ago

This is from the same Erann Gat (aka Ron Garret) who wrote the popular lisp at the JPL essay[1], and it covers some of the same ground.

His last point, that lisp can and should be improved, is one that he makes periodically. There's a barrier to some improvements to Common Lisp caused by the fact that the standard has been long closed and doesn't look like it will be reopened, but there have been improvement in areas that are outside of the standard.

For example both Ron's extended post and the previous hn discussion of this post note the pain of finding and installing lisp libraries. Quicklisp beta was recently released which relieves a significant amount of that pain.

[1]http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

Edit: I noticed this in the previous posting of this thread:

Ron> For the record, I did not submit this article, and specifically declined a request to do so. It's not that I don't stand by what I wrote (I do) but it was written for a specific audience at a specific time and I don't think it deserves the attention that it's getting now.

...

akkartik> I noticed. http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-are-programming-lang... Thanks.

nickik4• 15 years ago

He says norvig left lisp behind when he came to google witch is true but in Codes at Work he basiclly says that it was to hard to retrain all those C++ Programmers to Lisp was to much work and he uses Python because its a better sudo-code. He still thinks lisp is better for big projects.

It was again the problem that people where all trained in C/C++.

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

> its a better sudo-code

Now that's a powerful language. :)

reirob• 15 years ago

Great write-up! Basically a person that was using more than 20 years of Lisp successfully and considered Lisp allowing higher productivity admits that there are now other languages that allows higher productivity than Lisp.

At the end when I read the comment:

> I think that if Lisp does not evolve it will die, and I > don't want to see that happen. I still think Lisp is > great. I also think it can be, and should be, improved.

I wonder what kind of improvements does the author have in his mind! If somebody knows please kindly enlighten me.

felideon• 15 years ago

"Basically a person that was using more than 20 years of Lisp successfully and considered Lisp allowing higher productivity admits that there are now other languages that allows higher productivity than Lisp."

No, just a case of Stockholm Syndrome. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/d11c7e5619...

"I wonder what kind of improvements does the author have in his mind! If somebody knows please kindly enlighten me."

As Erik Naggum said: Erann Gat does not want to enhance Common Lisp, he [just] wants to feel better.

I encourage you to keep reading Naggum's line of thought: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/9edc8f7ee2...

mahmud2• 15 years ago

I don't speak for the author, but I had the feeling he would retract those remarks today, based on our exchanges here on HN.

In other news, STFU and hack. Enough with Lisp politics posts. It's just a language.

dexen2• 15 years ago

``In other news, STFU and hack.'' -- best wrap-up of the month. You sire are a genius :-D sig'd.

gtani• 15 years ago

Sadly, these multiple identities are not angry enough to qualify him as a "Mad people of comp.lang.lisp"

http://www.tfeb.org/lisp/mad-people.html

lisper7• 15 years ago

I guess I'm not mad enough yet :-)

parfe• 15 years ago

Do you know of any startups using a LISP as the primary dev language?

nickik4• 15 years ago

Yep, I just been to the new lisp meeting in Zürich. The meeting was by a startup that do pretty cool networking stuff. The use like 80% lisp, some low level C code and a tiny bit of R.

http://teclo.net/

rgoddard• 15 years ago

Flightcaster was using clojure as a core part of their infrastructure.

mahmud2• 15 years ago

Does it have to be a _startup_?

brlewis7• 15 years ago

The startup that Akamai bought that helps companies make mobile versions of their websites primarily used Clojure, and continues to do so at Akamai.

My creation, the world's best photo sharing site, primarily uses Kawa Scheme: http://ourdoings.com/

pchristensen• 15 years ago

I made a list a while ago but it's a couple years out of date. It's probably a big underestimate because I last updated it before Clojure started to boom. I'll add anything people mention in this thread and if anyone knows more, email peter @ pchristensen . com

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/lisp-companies/

silverlake• 15 years ago

ITA uses Lisp and was bought by Google for $700M.

sedachv2• 15 years ago

There's a ton. I'm working at a new company and we use JazzScheme for everything, but it's a spin-off and not a startup.

The author of the original post made an angel investment in a Common Lisp-based startup after they went through YC.

dexen2• 15 years ago

PG's Viaweb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb ...and they managed a good exit ;-)

PG's take on this subject: it's about beating the averages: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

zachbeane3• 15 years ago

I'd submit http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3208226254834485@naggum.... if my site wasn't blacklisted. "What I want from my Common Lisp vendor and the Common Lisp community"

lisper7• 15 years ago

Why is your site blacklisted?

zachbeane3• 15 years ago

Sometimes I make fun of Paul Graham.

herdrick• 15 years ago

A more accurate title today would be, "How I lost my faith in Common Lisp".

dspeyer• 15 years ago

Note python.

The beginning of the article was all Lisp demolishing C and Fortran. Then he saw that Python could stand up to it. Most of the flexibility, nicer syntax and better libraries.

Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years. Is it any surprise the rest of the world caught up?

motxilo2• 15 years ago

Yeah, a total surprise that the world has taken 25 yrs to catch up.

brlewis7• 15 years ago

I laughed at your comment and there's a good point in there, but then I downvoted it because it's counterproductive to this discussion. I'll get a headache if the comments here end up like every other language war on the Internet.

brlewis7• 15 years ago

I understand that casual conversation doesn't always require one to factcheck every statement, but did you think before you wrote "Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years" whether you really know that? And did you think it would lead to productive discussion?

akkartik• 15 years ago

When I read his comment I automatically converted it in my mind to "Common Lisp has stood still for the past 25 years." 25 years is probably too much, but compared to clojure and racket Common Lisp seems archaic, like reading Shakespeare. If it has had updates they've been on the edges, making the standards bulkier and more arcane, harder to parse.

How I lost my faith in Lisp

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