Common Lisp – Myths and Legends (2002)

http://www.lispworks.com/products/myths_and_legends.html

by susam • 4 years ago

107 67 4 years ago

xigoi4• 4 years ago

One thing that puts me off about Common Lisp is functions that do multiple different things depending on a flag passed to them. (format nil s) formats a string, whereas (format t s) formats a string and prints it to stdout. This doesn't look like good design.

medo-bear4• 4 years ago

format is not just a function. it is a domain specific language. it even has a wikipedia entry, all its own. Like it or not, nothing similar exists in any other language

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Format_(Common_Lisp)

xigoi4• 4 years ago

format is not just a function.

The article you linked literally starts with:

Format is a function in Common Lisp…

gumby3• 4 years ago

Like it or not, nothing similar exists in any other language

Uh, what? It's not that different from the printf metalanguage (more powerful, sure, but not that different and inspired by printf)

smcn• 4 years ago

It makes sense when you understand what it's asking you for. That first argument is you specifying an output destination. For example, would you like to write to an open file, to an open port, to whatever you want. Specifying `t` is the current standard output, whereas nil is you saying "no, just give me the string".

Also, `(format t "str")` does not return a string. At least not on SBCL or CCL.

medo-bear4• 4 years ago

thats right. the spec states that if destination is non-nil then format returns nil. otherwise a string

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/f_form....

xigoi4• 4 years ago

Still, why not have a function that formats a string and another that outputs it somewhere, instead of one that does two unrelated things?

kazinator6• 4 years ago

There is a rhyme and reason to it. There is a stream argument, with the convention that if NIL is used, the stream is an implicit string output stream created for that call, such that the string is returned. And if T is used, then it's a shorthand for standard output. The argument may also be a string with a fill pointer.

This convention isn't just in format. It has a name, stream designator:

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/26_glo...

Other functions like write support the convention.

Moreover there is a broader designator concept at play: there are other kinds of designators.

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/26_glo...

A designator is some object that by convention stands for another one, under the semantics of some function.

For instance, functional arguments may be function objects or symbols: (mapcar #'list ...) or (mapcar 'list). The list symbol isn't a function, it's a symbol; the reason you can use it as a function is that it's accepted as a function designator. When you call a symbol as a function, it is resolved to the function via its global function binding.

Another kind of designator is the spreadable argument list designator: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/26_glo... Some functions use this to take a single object or a list in the same argument position. It makes the functions nicer to use in the case when there is just one object, not having to specify the argument as (list arg).

kagevf2• 4 years ago

(mapcar 'list)

Thank you for sharing that, I didn't know that was possible.

I also tried just doing 'list at the repl, and sure enough it gets recognized as a function.

I thought I could break it by doing this:

(let ((list (list 1 2 3)))

   (mapcar 'list list))

I even tried adding on (funcall 'list list) to that block and it still works the same as if I had used (funcall #'list list) ....

I guess it works because the list I bound in the LET isn't referenced as a symbol so FUNCALL etc can distinguish one as a symbol that has a function and the other as the name of a binding ...

Was not expecting these results, so I'll need to review symbols and namespaces ...

lispm2• 4 years ago

(format t s) formats a string and prints it to stdout

FORMAT runs a domain specific language, which causes various print operations to an output stream.

agumonkey• 4 years ago

this one is particularly strange but it seems cultural, scheme also works the same

for printf debugging it's one more parameter you don't wanna type :)

dreamcompiler5• 4 years ago

We're talking about I/O here, so we're already outside the domain of functional programming: It's necessary to specify where the output is supposed to go, and that's what format's first argument is for.

If you want purely functional string creation, #'format can handle that by passing it nil as its "where" argument.

In both cases #'format does the same thing; the only difference is where the output goes. If #'format knows it's operating non-functionally it can avoid consing up a string and send its output directly to the destination. So it's not necessarily the case that (format t s) creates a string at all.

jgeada• 4 years ago

Not expensive? When the reference cost of not hobbled or otherwise limited development environments for almost every other commercial language out there is $0.00, that the hobbyist entry point for LispWorks is $500 is … more than slightly out of whack. And that LispWorks price is just for the development environment, not for access to a curated store and delivery service or anything else.

Just as well sbcl (Steel Bank Common Lisp) etc exist.

eduction2• 4 years ago

Borland Pascal was $150 in 1983 and considered affordably priced. (Items like linkers used to be sold separately but were integrated into the Borland Pascal development environment, this was seen as a bargain.) Inflation adjusted that’s $456 today.

I’m not saying I’d spend $500 for this but we are spoiled by all the great free tools today and lose sight of the big picture. Software developers in the US routinely make over $200k/yr. What is $500 for a tool if it really did make you more productive?

kazinator6• 4 years ago

What is $500 for a tool if it really did make you more productive?

What is $500 for a tool to you if you make lots of money? Sure, that is one question.

The more relevant question is: what is $500 for the tool, to the tool?

In 2020, what $500 for a tool is a kiss of death. Nobody learns it; no third-party ecosystem, no jobs, ...

OK, you can have some free-with-limitations student or personal editions or whatever. In the FOSS-dominated landscape, that's still a kiss of death. The entire quality and scope depends on the in-house development behind closed doors, which is funded by the $500 licenses.

I think, without the multiple efforts to have free Lisp over the past 3+ decades, Lisp would be history.

richiebful1• 4 years ago

It's in line with what you'd pay for Visual Studio. VS Pro licences are $45 a month and Enterprise licenses are $250/month. It's fair to ask $500 for hobby and $3000 for pro for a perpetual license for LispWorks

mandw• 4 years ago

Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo Prolog, all things I got at an age when it was just a hobby in high school. In fact I can still look over at my bookshelf and see turbo prolog books.. some things you cant bring yourself to throw away!

     I use SBCL, just for hobby and it does everything I want but I agree that the price is not a lot for the tool if it offers something you want for that amount.

     We have got used to not paying for things and its not money we don't have, we have just spent it somewhere else because we have not had to spend it on tools but the price is not over the top - only if you have never had to pay for something.

msla• 4 years ago

Another point is that a lot of Common Lisp code seems to implicitly assume SBCL, so I don't know what, if anything, I can get through Quicklisp will run on Lispworks' little interpreter. That might not be a big problem if I were to ignore external libraries in favor of some preexisting codebase.

_ph_• 4 years ago

It was not expensive compared to other commercial Lisp implementations. But the world has moved on and compared to other languages, the prices are unfortunately eye-watering for hobbyists/enthusiasts. Whichs is sad, as Lispworks is a nice environment. I was several times close to getting a personal license, but I just cannot justify it. I can understand that they need to make a living and I am very happy that they are still around. But on the other side, they never managed to get any money from me with their pricing scheme.

I would happily pay the 500 - well at least after a deep breath :p - for a non-commercial license without limits and cross platform, as I would like to use it on the Mac and on Linux, but afterall, I would just use one seat at a time. At these prices, a subscription model might make sense too.

But, as you wrote, there is SBCL+Slime, which is a great environment too. SBCL is even the better compiler.

gumby3• 4 years ago

How old is this? Yahoo has surely revamped its code in the past 20 years (if Yahoo stores even exist any more) and John Mallory left MIT decades ago.

wrs• 4 years ago

dang• 4 years ago

Text from 2002 looks identical: https://web.archive.org/web/20021105131238/http://www.lispwo.... We've put that in the title above.

jonas21• 4 years ago

Yahoo! Store is what Paul Graham's startup Viaweb became after Yahoo acquired them in 1998.

dreamcompiler5• 4 years ago

John Mallory left MIT decades ago

Not true, and his name is spelled Mallery. No idea if he reads HN.

gumby3• 4 years ago

He seems to spend most of his time in the mountains

PeterStuer2• 4 years ago

Personal Edition Limitations

Please note that the LispWorks Personal Edition, distributed free of charge, has the following intentional limitations:

    There is a heap size limit which, if exceeded, causes the image to exit. A warning is provided when the limit is approached.
    There is a time limit of 5 hours for each session, after which LispWorks Personal exits, possibly without saving your work or performing cleanups such as removing temporary files. You are warned after 4 hours of use.
    The functions save-image, deliver, and load-all-patches are not available.
    Initialization files are not loaded."

And it is not popular because ...

Guthur• 4 years ago

There is a multitude of very effective free CL implementations.

dreamcompiler5• 4 years ago

One big deal about Lispworks is that it comes with a nice GUI creation toolkit. If you need to write a program with a GUI, it's easy with Lispworks and difficult with the free implementations.

mepian• 4 years ago

You can get SBCL for free with no limitations which actually beats Lispworks on performance AFAIK: https://www.sbcl.org/

PeterStuer2• 4 years ago

Not around the time where it mattered. I loved Lisp, but when our lab moved to an x86 architecture it was Allegro big bucks or nothing.

I was referring to the above pestering of the user base, not that there aren't alternatives.

whartung• 4 years ago

I used this at work for months. When it quit, I just reloaded and kept going. It was for some local tooling work I was doing. I never ran into any of the limitations save the timeout, which for me was no big deal.

I already owned a version at home for myself (it was, like $249 or something at the time), but this was also a time where folks still paid for software. Not everything was done on Linux with GCC, although Java was free at the time.

A year before this I had my previous company pony up the $$$$ for Delphi's Enterprise edition (whatever it was called). That was a lot more than LW was.

I contemplated getting Franz, but I never wanted to call for a quote, and they didn't publish prices. But I know they were expensive as well.

Smalltalk, Lisp, Delphi, Visual Studio, everything cost money. And though Java was free, lots of folks were selling IDEs for it. I used Emacs back in the day, and we paid silly amounts of $$$$ for WebLogic.

yazzku2• 4 years ago

I like how every Common Lisp website doesn't even have an SSL certificate. Just started learning the language recently and it takes two clicks to get anywhere.

tmtvl2• 4 years ago

Time to port certbot to CL?

yazzku2• 4 years ago

I don't see the relation between the web server and CL. Are you saying these sites are running off CL and would benefit from a certbot port, or were you just joking?

aidenn0• 4 years ago

common-lisp.net sbcl.org abcl.org all do?

vindarel2• 4 years ago

"Who's Using Lisp?" but today? An ongoing list: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ (Google (they also contribute to SBCL), quantum computing companies, Intel, millions-LOC CAD systems, chatbots companies, trading services, big data analysis providers, the NASA, banks, cloud backup providers, music composition software… and smaller companies and one-person businesses)

bmitc• 4 years ago

That list is not curated and kept up to date, and so it looks more impressive than it is. Several of those places are defunct or have put the Lisp codebase into maintenance mode or sunsetted it entirely.

medo-bear4• 4 years ago

care to elaborate? the maintainer regularly updates the list

vindarel2• 4 years ago

(edited) I just removed companies marked as "disappeared"! (10 of them) If you have more info to share, please do.

This list is also not exhaustive.

morelish• 4 years ago

Kind of amazing they are still a going business. I didn't realise any companies really used lisp for anything. I assume whoever is paying them money is doing so for some really niche or legacy?

jolmg• 4 years ago

A few days ago I noticed that commercial Smalltalk also still exists:

https://www.cincom.com/us/smalltalk

By niche, I assume you mean niche interest rather than niche purpose. They're both general-purpose languages that are usable on the latest OSes, after all.

diskzero• 4 years ago

I am a current LispWorks customer using the product for new product development. I wouldn’t consider my usage niche, but then again, I am not sure what you may consider to be niche or not.

dilawar• 4 years ago

Isn't grammarly using lisp?

hajile• 4 years ago

I did some work for a machine translation business that used Common Lisp as their "secret sauce". As they considered it a serious competitive advantage, you wouldn't hear about it anywhere.

I've seen this with quite a few other companies since, but that means that lots of companies could be using lisp and nobody would ever know about it.

kazinator6• 4 years ago

Some years ago I read the same "secret weapon" rhetoric on a website dedicated to ... Cobol; I've not taken it seriously since.

thoueioruo2i34• 4 years ago

One of the biggest workloads on Google's Borg is the one running the flight-scheduling service that run on CL.

Common Lisp – Myths and Legends (2002)

Related Stories