Why You Do Not Use Lisp -- a survey

http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-you-do-not-use-lisp-results-of-poll.html

by fogus • 17 years ago

16 43 17 years ago

kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com

spitfire4• 17 years ago

No support for formal proving methods. Some of the software I develop is life-crtical. "Works here, passes my tests" Isn't good enough.

For offline analysis and general cocking about though, it's the bee's knees.

wynand• 17 years ago

Though I haven't programmed in Qi (which runs atop a Common Lisp environment), I have read up about its extensible type system. It looks powerful and might be useful for what you're doing.

spitfire4• 17 years ago

You also have to worry about memory usage and runtime determinism - When restarting an engine at 10,000 feet or on takeoff[1] some things MUST happen at certain times as quickly as possible. GC isn't an option, and "oops out of memory" isn't an option either.

It comes down to it that lisp doesn't have the ecosystem behind it for life-crtical applications. I doubt it ever will.

What it is useful for though is analysis tools - helping keep people out of those life endangering situations.

1. See Diamond da-42 takeoff crashes.

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

Has the hardware your product runs on been similarly proven correct?

cousin_it2• 17 years ago

I mostly do client-side Web development - JavaScript and Flash - and prefer to write in the native languages of the platform to leave less space for bugs to hide. (Even MTASC, the very good indie Flash compiler, turned out to contain obscure bugs after I abused it for a couple years.) And my server-side stuff is simple enough that Lisp wouldn't be a big win space-wise over the handful of PHP one-pagers that I tend to write. Lisp also loses to PHP on maturity, documentation and support - whenever I stumble on some exotic webapp-specific problem, chances are it's already covered in detail on php.net. It looks like Perl and Python have ecosystems of similar quality, and some of my friends swear by the Microsoft tech stack, but unfortunately I can't trust Lisp to the same degree.

If I ever encounter a problem where cleverness of programming is the limiting factor, I'll probably use some advanced language (yep, I can handle Lisps, ML/Haskell or even APL/K passably well). But such problems just aren't very common. On most projects I spend most of the time figuring out how to solve this user problem on that programming platform as directly as possible, not solving mathy type puzzles.

mahmud8• 17 years ago

Lisp also loses to PHP on maturity, documentation and support

Lisp is 50 years old and standardized for 15 years. Has both an ANSI and ISO standard, freely available books and manuals written by the best and the brightest of the Art. There are 4 commercial Lisp companies and a total of 8 standard-compliant implementations.

There is absolutely no comparison, and it's both telling and sad you would utter them in the same sentence. Take it back.

protomyth• 17 years ago

A better way of stating it, is that while Lisp is older, there is a lack of real world experience, documentation, and support for using Lisp as a language for web development. The volume of material, understanding, and optimization strategy for PHP is far and away greater than Lisp.

As an example, search for a simple question on how to do some developmental task on google for both PHP and Lisp. PHP will have more informative pages.

frig4• 17 years ago

PHP.net landing page for string documentation:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.strings.php

(also available in 7-8 other languages). Note all useful string concepts are one click away, and the documentation allows user commentary (much of which is quite helpful).

Common Lisp Hyperspec landing page for Strings:

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/16_.ht...

CMUCL string documentation:

http://common-lisp.net/project/cmucl/doc/cmu-user/unicode.ht...

SBCL's manual has no "table of contents" item that even mentions strings.

Stuff like this matters if you care about accessibility.

It should be trivial to google yourself a well-documented list of a given language's standard string functions without a lot of work.

cousin_it2• 17 years ago

mahmud, it comes down to this:

You're thrown a typical webdev task, like setting the filesize limit for user uploads. Quick, how much time will it take in CL? Connect to MySQL and store some data. How many minutes, how many lines of code, how many libraries downloaded? Now determine the dimensions of a jpeg image. And parse some JSON from a file. Faster! (In PHP we haven't even left the standard library yet. It's that perfectly tailored for what web people do.) A weird problem arises, what's the chance that some PHP user had it before and wrote it up, compared to CL user? Something more complex: HTTP request goes in, ping to payment system goes out, file starts downloading with correct mimetype, where do you go for working code examples? You need to move your app to another webhost, how much hassle will it take? Client needs a CMS, which one do you pick, and how often does it get security updates? You make your app open source and people want to install it, what instructions do you give them?

Yes dammit, let's get practical. Let's get our hands dirty. I love this stuff.

pilif3• 17 years ago

(because(as(my(coworker(said:(the(human(brain(is(no(f*ing(pushdown(automata)))))))))))))

SCNR

dreish• 17 years ago

That's the easiest and most superficial rationalization for not bothering to try a Lisp (any Lisp), but also the least compelling argument against it, and likely not even the most significant actual reason you haven't bothered to learn it.

huherto2• 17 years ago

It may not be a fundamental problem for people that know it well. But, first impressions matter nonetheless. Edit:Spelling

pilif3• 17 years ago

I was joking about the syntax and the way how I just can't wrap my brain around reading lisp and matching parentheses.

I was not joking about the recursive and functional nature of Lisp, both of which I'm finding very interesting (and my coworker is, in fact, a big fan of Haskell)

swannodette2• 17 years ago

pilif3• 17 years ago

like? Not really. But at least I have a chance at spotting syntax errors by eye without the help of an editor.

authentic• 17 years ago

automaton

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

He dismisses "lack of support for modern programming practice" far, far too easily. Clojure is modern. CL is not. That lack of modernity is a serious reason not to use it.

mquander• 17 years ago

I interpret "Lisp" to mean "any Lisp," since none of the reasons he gives are really related to CL in particular.

KazimirMajorinc• 17 years ago

It is true, Lisp means any Lisp, and it is specifically noted on the advertised poll that all Lisp dialects are included.

It is also specifically noted that Lisp programmers who use Lisp part time have right to write why they do not use Lisp - when they do not use it.

There is a huge variety of reasons and ways people think.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

Except that the answer would simply be nonsense if applied to Clojure. It does too have safe, fairly lightweight concurrency, FP and immutable persistent data, both a standard library with all the trimmings and scads of add-ons (via Java), yadda yadda, modernity out the wazoo. What's it missing?

(I think the actual answer here is: mindshare. Respondents heard Lisp and assumed CL, maybe Scheme.)

huherto2• 17 years ago

If I wanted to used Lisp, I wouldn't know which version to use. That would be a problem to me.

mahmud8• 17 years ago

You are a programmer: your primary responsibility is problem understanding, searching the solution-space and evaluating your options.

Even an automaton like the Google algorithm can search data and correlate them. When I type "Common" it auto-completes "Lisp". You should be able to search, find, and compare technologies on their own merit.

The entire programming fora are burning with altruistic recommendations for free Lisp books, some of them classics of the field.

stefano• 17 years ago

Just pick one of them randomly. Once you know enough about the language, you will be able to choose the implementation that better suits your needs.

mahmud8• 17 years ago

A very convenient "have you stopped beating your wife" type poll. Isn't it funny how one can create a movement from ether by just setting up a loaded questionnaire online?

Instead of an anonymous and questionable poll setup by someone with an axe to grind[1] I give you The Road to Lisp. Real names, real people:

http://wiki.alu.org/The%20Road%20To%20Lisp%20Survey

[1] The author of that blog is a NewLisp user who made it a habit to troll comp.lang.lisp and other Lisp fora, demanding people treat NewLisp as an equal/real Lisp.

brown9-2• 17 years ago

Shouldn't this survey have a "I never learned it" option?

I can't vote on / use something that I don't know.

Why You Do Not Use Lisp -- a survey

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