Lisp is sin

http://blogs.msdn.com/sriram/archive/2006/01/15/lisp_is_sin.aspx

by iamelgringo • 17 years ago

103 53 17 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

> I know that if I write a C# program today that it can be called by a Boo program which in turn can be called by IronPython.

This is another reason we should be grateful for Clojure. It will have a .Net implementation soon, too.

fogus2• 17 years ago

For some value of "soon"

radu_floricica4• 17 years ago

http://github.com/richhickey/clojure-clr/tree/master

http://blog.n01se.net/?p=41

http://clojure.org/todo

As a rule, things move pretty fast in Clojure-land. And in the beginning it was dual-platform, so it's not really a new idea either.

KirinDave7• 17 years ago

I see two problems with this statement:

1. This only works if you're willing to seclude yourself in the Microsoft Yurt and never leave. Technical benefits aside, history has shown MS is not afraid to abandon projects. It's a dangerous position to take, in my opinion.

And I sincerely doubt a port of Clojure to .NET would result in a 0-difference result. We're back to the exact same problem that plagues other lisp implementations right now, which is to say we haven't really bought much.

2. It's not that different from how things are in the C world, save that you'd share more of your runtime infrastructure. My job has been full of instances where an executable interacts with a diverse set of languages. One example I work on daily includes Erlang, Ruby, Prolog, and C++ all in one space, calling around (in a structured way, of course). The implication that you cannot make modern languages communicate without a single umbrella runtime is demonstrably false.

radu_floricica4• 17 years ago

What I meant was now you have an ecology of languages on the jvm (Clojure, JRuby, JPython, Scala, Groovy...), and on top of this a .NET port is in the works. Sorry if I was a bit unclear.

joechung• 17 years ago

I thought Rich Hickey abandoned the .NET version of Clojure a couple years ago?

radu_floricica4• 17 years ago

Yes, but it's alive again. Though I'm more excited about the clojure-in-clojure thing - it will eventually make it easily portable on a whole lot of platforms.

rbanffy• 17 years ago

And why would be able to run it on .NET would be some reason to be grateful?

semmons• 17 years ago

> But I'm willing to bet that a lot more developers will be able to understand this since this is in a programming language they understand well.

This is one argument I don't buy. He talks about the Mort programmers never being able to understand Lisp. I am willing to bet, any Mort programmer who looked at this C# would not be able to understand it. I'm sure they could take advantage of it, but write it themselves, I don't think so. And anyone who could write this, can grasp Lisp themselves.

arakyd• 17 years ago

Yeah, he says that Lisp is too hard for the common man, and then sort of implies that this is because it doesn't use ALGOL derived syntax. I don't think that's the issue. It's not Mort who's fallen in love with ALGOL syntax, it's the CS graduate Elvis's who cling to their expensively acquired "skills" (priesthood memberships) with religious fervor (he says, as a CS student).

I program in C#, and lambdas and delegates are nice (I can't use expression trees because the company I work for standardizes on .NET 2.0). But the system is too gnarly, still verbose as fuck, and nowhere near as nice as Lisp (as Krishnan freely admits). This just increases the need for sophisticated developer tools and makes things more obscurantist, not less. C# is just another variation on Java, i.e. a way to drag Elvis types 10% closer to Lisp without depriving them of their oh so precious ALGOL syntax.

Fuck the priesthood, seriously.

dkersten• 17 years ago

I never did understand this averseness to anything not algol-derived... I personally like Lisps syntax (fuck off, even though it looks different and uses "s-expressions" and code as data and all the rest - ITS STILL SYNTAX) and I like point free syntax and forth-like syntax and prolog intrigues me and ML has interesting syntax too and ...

My point is: ITS JUST SYNTAX! Syntax doesn't define the language, just the look. I do like a nice, clean, concise syntax though.

yummyfajitas• 17 years ago

Something I've never gotten around to is building an algolish-lisp -> lisp translator.

    [a, b, c] -> '(a b c)

    f(x) -> (f x)

These two translations are strictly syntatic modifications to lisp.

Some syntactic sugar:

    {
        f(x)
        g(x)
    } ->
    (progn
        (f x)
        (g x)
    )

With these three tweaks, we are probably 90% of the way to recruiting the common man (if syntax is really what puts them off).

andreyf• 17 years ago

And anyone who could write this, can grasp Lisp themselves.

Write the memorizer? That's basic functional programming, but what does that have to do with Lisp? You could write it in JavaScript:

    function memoize(f) {
        var memory = {};
        return function memoized(arg) {
            return arg in memory ? memory[arg] : (memory[arg] = f(arg));
        }
    }

The big thing Lisp has left is reader and compile-time macros, and other systems [1] might be able to do both better pretty soon. Yes, Lisp has a lot to teach people who think that programming languages are passed down immutable from the superior minds of GvR or Stroustrup, but once you realize the enormous variety of decisions made in designing a language, it becomes clear that almost no number of languages will fill the space of possibilities.

A lot of ways, languages are like religions - they're part of social structure, and part of people's identity, and they tell you how to pray, when to fast, how to allocate and free memory, how to traverse the call stack, etc. But when you think about it hard enough, it's clear that all of these decisions are better made by individuals, not committees or institutions.

1. http://piumarta.com/software/cola/

TallGuyShort• 17 years ago

>> one of the driving forces was to let non-geeks build software

He makes the extremely important point that the technology has failed if ordinary people can't use it to get their own work done. However, I've personally seen a project where the aim was essentially to let non-programmers program, and the result was horrendously messy. In large part, I think that's because a lot of people ended up developing that had no understanding of the underlying concepts, and as a result the output was extremely hacked together and unintuitive. I think it's great when people realize that the whole point of most software is to enable regular users to complete a task without worrying about the internal computation, but it's just as important to realize the need to _understand_ what is happening.

KirinDave7• 17 years ago

Shouldn't we ask ourselves if this goal is reasonable? Making arbitrary software is at the limits of our capacity right now, even if people devote their lives to it as a profession, passion, and an art.

It's one thing to take an approach like Apple Automator (a much beloved automation environment), but it's another entirely to say, "General Purpose Software should be within the grasp of the 'average person.'" It's not clear that the goal is even reasonable! A lot of software, to do what it does, requires the use of complex mathematics, algorithms, and cryptography that frequently even the implementors only vaguely understand. Manipulating those in an abstract and correct fashion is difficult in the extreme (e.g., the morass of timing attacks that have plagued modern implementations of cryptographic protocols). We can barely make software with smart people!

jrockway3• 17 years ago

Making arbitrary software is at the limits of our capacity right now, even if people devote their lives to it as a profession, passion, and an art.

Yeah, you are exactly right. Programming languages need to be designed for the very best programmers -- they are the ones that need the productivity boost. For me, not understanding the language is never a problem. Making something "easier to understand" will not help me write software that goes together faster or ends up more reliable. It often has the opposite effect; Java's lack of ... everything, for the sake of simplicity, really slows me down. Comparatively, learning a new concept is much easier. If I start using a library that uses Arrows, I read the Arrow paper, spend a few days playing with it, and then I have one more tool that will help me be more productive every day for the rest of my life. Making a language that doesn't have arrows saves me reading a paper about them, but it wastes my time every day for the rest of my life.

So, "simple" programming languages -- do not want. I am not saying that you should start your "intro to computer programming" class with a long lecture about category theory, but I am saying that you should never hide things from people that want to know about them.

itgoon• 17 years ago

Horse hockey.

While I know that there are a lot of horror stories (and I can tell a few), some of the most productive "programmers" I've ever met used MS Access or Excel.

If you don't consider advanced usage of these applications as a form of programming, then you are illustrating the point: It is not only possible to "dumb down" programming, it is inevitable. So much so that you haven't even noticed it happening.

omouse2• 17 years ago

However, I've personally seen a project where the aim was essentially to let non-programmers program, and the result was horrendously messy.

So what? The goal of turning every user into a programmer is perfectly reasonable. Almost all users of the early systems and computers were also programmers. Even today, business users make use of Excel/Access and some macros to do some programming (even though it can be seen as basic).

Don't you remember a time when operating systems came with programming languages and compilers and actively promoted them to the user?

Oh, and HyperCard. There was another great example of "user's" programming. I've also seen some hideously ugly GIMP script-fu scripts but they worked and did the job of the "user" that wrote them.

In the end, the distinction between a user and a programmer is artificially created by software that doesn't view anybody else as smart enough to enter the monastary of the programmer.

erikb85• 17 years ago

Hm. If Lisp would be an "everybodys" language, what would be the Lisp then? Actually, the main success of lisp comes from its purity its scientific deepness. If you try to follow another goal, you just lose vision for your actual one. If somebody really needs an "everybodys" language, for example because he is a lawyer or something else, okay. There is Python, Javascript, Java and many other languages who try in different ways to be for everybody. And all of them are important. As is Lisp, how it is.

tnovelli4• 17 years ago

He rambles a lot, but he's right about the need for a new Lisp, and refers to the ILC'05 presentations by Dussud, Baker, and McCarthy on "Re-inventing Lisp". Those are some pretty radical proposals. (Summaries: http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/2005/06/ilc-2005-wednesday-r...).

I think the trouble with Lisp (and Scheme) is that there's so much cruft and inconsistency beneath the veneer of simplicity (see http://tnovelli.blogspot.com/2009/08/lisp-crisis.html). Lisp is a great language to study; I just wish it was more practical and popular. It sucks having to choose between awkward (Lisp) and inflexible (everything else). :-(

KirinDave7• 17 years ago

Your resources are pretty old, the "crisis" of car/cadr is just not there with modern, updated lisp implementations like PLT Scheme.

PLT Scheme is competitive in every way with Python and Ruby, I don't know why people keep ignoring it.

tnovelli4• 17 years ago

Umm... what's this scheme_make_pair(car,cdr) function in plt/src/mzscheme/src/list.c? That's a wart (the crisis is in my mind :-)

It doesn't have to be that way: Clojure has abstract sequence types, with cons/car/cdr wrappers in case you want them.

justinhj2• 17 years ago

Compare the C# version of memoize to this one (from On Lisp). The C# one looks very long and ugly in comparison, so I hope it isn't the new Common Lisp.

(defun memoize (fn) (let ((cache (make-hash-table :test #'equal))) #'(lambda (&rest args) (multiple-value-bind (val win) (gethash args cache) (if win val (setf (gethash args cache) (apply fn args)))))))

snprbob863• 17 years ago

Lisp certainly has many advantages, but general readability is not one of them. Maybe when talking about complex algorithms with a sufficiently designed DSL... Here's your code reformatted:

  (defun memoize (fn)
      (let ((cache (make-hash-table :test #'equal)))
      #'(lambda (&rest args)
          (multiple-value-bind (val win) (gethash args cache)
          (if win val
              (setf (gethash args cache) (apply fn args)))))))

And here is a prettier (use of TryGetValue), C# 3.0 (Func types, local variable type inference) version:

  static Func<TParam, TReturn> Memoize<TParam, TReturn>(Func<TParam, TReturn> func)
  {
      var memoDict = new Dictionary<TParam, TReturn>();
      return arg =>
      {                
          TReturn result;
          if (!memoDict.TryGetValue(arg, out result))
          {
              result = func(arg);
              memoDict[arg] = result;
          }
          return result;
      };
  }

The C# version is clearly longer, but less dense. Most of the noise in the C# version comes from the verbose type declarations. Almost anyone could read the C# code, provided they know that => means lambda and at least heard of a closure. That is not true of the Common Lisp version. As with everything in engineering, it is a balance. Lisp is absurdly powerful and C# is absurdly clear to read. As a programmer who does a lot of maintainence programming at work, I highly appreciate that attribute of the language.

lispm• 17 years ago

I would format the function like this:

    (defun memoize (fn)
      (let ((cache (make-hash-table :test #'equal)))
        (lambda (&rest args)
          (multiple-value-bind (val win)
                               (gethash args cache)
            (if win
              val
              (setf (gethash args cache) (apply fn args)))))))

I'm a Lisp programmer and the C# arglist is already hard to parse with lots of noise - for me.

Second I don't look for { or ( but for the block indentation, so a { on a single line does not give me enough visual clues.

The 'return arg =>' form is not obvious to me. What does it do? Where dies TReturn come from, TParam?

Why is there }; and } ?

stefano• 17 years ago

I don't know C#, but it seems to me that your C# version of memoize works only for functions with exactly one argument, while the CL version works for any kind of function.

justinhj2• 17 years ago

Hmmm, I guess I should learn how to format text on hn when I want to make a point about readability. ;-)

Even so, with the caveat that you have to learn Common Lisp fist, I think the CL version is infinitely more clear and elegant. All that type information is redundant in the C# version, since in this case all you want to say about the types is that you don't care what they are.

multiple-value-bind is among the longest function name in CL, and doing something that python does much better with syntax alone, perhaps Python is the new Lisp.

dan00• 17 years ago

"Almost anyone could read the C# code, provided they know that => means lambda and at least heard of a closure. That is not true of the Common Lisp version."

Aha. WTF? Ok, if I know what the code means, than I can read it. But that's only the case for C# and not for Common Lisp.

StrawberryFrog2• 17 years ago

Code in unfamiliar languages always looks ugly. I know c# but not Lisp, and that just looks like ugly brackets salad to me. It can't help that your formatting as AWOL.

So your statement that The C# one looks very long and ugly is entirely subjective.

licoresse3• 17 years ago

Of course it is, and can I coin the "ugly brackets salad" phrase?

rplevy• 17 years ago

This article is a couple years old. The author probably would have tried Clojure for his foray into Lisp had this been written today.

billswift• 17 years ago

If I remember it right, Joel's "Perils of Java Schools" was about college CS programs which should be a lot more fundamental than just practical. This guy's essay conflates the equivalent of weekend carpenters, building maintenance, and civil engineers into one set of "programmers".

Lisp is sin

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