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0 pointsnmrm11y ago0 comments

I worked through SICP years ago and used scheme as my primary language for a couple of years. I write in an ML dialect at my day job.

1. lisp got a lot of stuff wrong; there's really no reason not to use scheme.

2. lisp syntax is more something to overcome than something to become "enlightened" about. Language syntax no longer has to be motivated by ease of parsing.

3. Dynamic typing only gets so enlightening. At the end of the day, type theories are where the rubber hits the road.

4. Macros don't excite me much. I mean, they're cool, sure. Okay.

At the end of the day, there's a lot more exciting stuff out there (e.g. any math class beyond the calculus sequence or so) that people get way less worked up about.

It's possible to understand lisp, think that there are important ideas there, but not go around evangelizing. Most smart people who study something non-trivial don't evangelize.

0 pointsnmrm11y ago0 comments

I worked through SICP years ago and used scheme as my primary language for a couple of years. I write in an ML dialect at my day job.

1. lisp got a lot of stuff wrong; there's really no reason not to use scheme.

2. lisp syntax is more something to overcome than something to become "enlightened" about. Language syntax no longer has to be motivated by ease of parsing.

3. Dynamic typing only gets so enlightening. At the end of the day, type theories are where the rubber hits the road.

4. Macros don't excite me much. I mean, they're cool, sure. Okay.

At the end of the day, there's a lot more exciting stuff out there (e.g. any math class beyond the calculus sequence or so) that people get way less worked up about.

It's possible to understand lisp, think that there are important ideas there, but not go around evangelizing. Most smart people who study something non-trivial don't evangelize.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

lispm11y ago· 2 in thread

The Lisp language syntax is not motivated by 'ease of parsing'. It is motivated by the 'code as data' idea, which enables a lot of useful source transformations to be implemented AND used in a relatively easy way. One of the applications of that are macros.

Scheme got a lot wrong from a practical perspective. Use Lisp instead.

Type theories are over-hyped. 99.99% of all software is written in languages without advanced type systems.

Macros are nothing for 'excitement'. They are a tool. They enable the user to write source transformations, which has several applications in Lisp: control structures, compile-time computation, etc etc.

nmrmOP11y ago

Lisp's macros don't even get variable binding right. Treatment of bound variables was one of the explicit purposes for the development of lambda calculus in the first place. Imho if you get something as fundamental as this wrong, you don't get to play.

But Im not going to get into a language war.

Stepping back to the original point, there are other significantly important/powerful ideas in the world, and lisp users are somewhat over-the-top in their significance-to-hype ratio.

lispm11y ago

Given that macros 'don't get variable binding right', they are still amazingly useful.

> Stepping back to the original point, there are other significantly important/powerful ideas in the world, and lisp users are somewhat over-the-top in their significance-to-hype ratio.

Many of the powerful ideas in software development are available in Lisp.

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