Re: [9fans] nice quote

[Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>]

> Let me be a little pedantic.

The 9fans know given the haphazard nature of a hobbyist's knowledge I am 
extremely bad at this, but then let me give it a try.

> FYI, it's been Lisp for a while.

As long as Britannica and Merriam-Webster call it LISP I don't think 
calling it LISP would be strictly wrong. Has LISt Processing become 
stigmatic in Lisp/LISP community?

> Like what? The if statement, which was invented by Lisp? The loop
> statement, for expressing loops? It sounds like you got a dose of Scheme
> rather than Lisp to me.

I just read in Wikipedia that, "Lisp's original conditional operator, cond, 
is the precursor to later if-then-else structures," without any citations. 
Assuming that to be true conditional branching is a fundamental element of 
control flow and it has existed in machine languages ever since early days. 
There's really very little to brag about it.

Regardless, I offer the following comparison:

> 19.2. How to Use Defstruct
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node170.html>

> Struct (C programming language)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struct_(C_programming_language)>

In the (small mind?) mental model of small computer there's the row of 
pigeonholes and the stencil you may slide along the row for "structured" 
access to its contents. I leave it to you to decide which of the above 
better corresponds to that. My opinion you already know.

Indeed, my only encounter with LISP has been Scheme and through a failed 
attempt to read SICP.

> This hasn't been true for a while. Common Lisp is a general purpose
> language like any other. The only thing I have ever found obnoxious about
> CL was the filesystem API. Most CL implementations are compilers these
> days and they produce surprisingly efficient machine code. The Scheme
> situation is more diverse but you can definitely find performance if
> that's what you're eluding to.

I was alluding to the expressive power of C versus LISP considered with 
respect to the primitives available on one's computing platform and 
primitives in which solutions to one's problems are best expressed. It 
isn't a matter of whether the language you use is supplemented by good 
libraries or how fast the binary image you produce can run as I have little 
doubt out there exist lightning fast implementations of complex algorithms 
in LISP. I was trying to give my personal example for why I managed to 
learn C and failed to learn LISP.

If you have a scrawny x86 on your desktop and are trying to implement, say, 
a bubble sort--yes, the notorious bubble sort, it's still the first thing 
that comes to a learner's mind--it seems C is quite apt for expressing your 
(embarrassing) solution in terms of what is available on your platform. 
Loops, arrays, swapping, with _minimal_ syntactic distraction. Simple, 
naive algorithms should end up in simple, immediately readable (and 
refutable) code. Compare two implementations and decide for yourself:

<http://en.literateprograms.org/Bubble_sort_(Lisp)>
<http://en.literateprograms.org/Bubble_sort_(C)>

>> Its claim to fame as the language for "wizards" remains.
>
> I think this has more to do with Lisp users being assholes than anything
> intrinsic about Lisp. This is one of the nice things about Clojure. It's
> a break from tradition in this regard, as well as many others.

I really did mean "wizards" by "wizards." I intended no insult--merely sort 
of an awed jealousy.

> It's as though you have the up-to-date negative propaganda, but not the
> up-to-date facts.

Of course. Propaganda has a wider outreach than facts, particularly when 
for every textbook on a subject there are, I don't know, ten (or more?) on 
the competing subject.

> The main benefits it had in AI were features that came from garbage
> collection and interactive development.

More importantly, LISt Processing which used to be an element of the expert 
systems approach to AI and which is now defunct (as a way of making 
machines intelligent, whatever that means). While "expert systems" continue 
to exist the word causes enough reverb of failure to be replaced by other 
buzzwords: knowledge-based systems, automated knowledge bases, and whatnot.

I think, and may be dead wrong, LISP's ominous appearance came from 
adhering to an AI paradigm. Now that the paradigm's no more viable why 
should the appearance persist?

> An advantage it has these days is that it produces code that performs
> better than, say, Python or Perl.

I cannot comment on this. Have no knowledge of Python and beg to disagree 
about Perl. The entry barrier for learning Perl was low enough for me to 
learn and use it, unlike LISP.

> I definitely would not call being a "general purpose system" and
> suitability for "application programming" a "specific application area."

Well, for one thing I believe you have misread me. I said C was a 
general-purpose language good for "system programming"--you seem to call 
that "being a good OS language"-- and low-level application programming. I 
probably should have taken more care and wrote the precise term: systems 
programming.

> This is like saying agglutinative languages are worse for conquering the
> world with than isolating languages because the Ottoman empire fell
> before the English empire.

Correlation doesn't imply causation--that's true. But there _are_ ways to 
ascertain a correlation is due to a causal relationship. One such way is to 
identify known causes of success or failure. _If_ one claims a language 
costs more to learn and rewards similarly or even less than another 
language one already has identified a known cause of failure. If failure 
does occur, causation by the language itself, rather than its surrounding 
elements (marketers, users, designers, climate, serendipity), cannot be 
ruled out.

> I think it's mostly happenstance. Lots of languages succeed despite
> having a killer app or app area. Python's a good example.

Despite _not_ having those, you mean, right? I think it's too early to talk 
about Python's success. It has barely lived half as long as C and one-third 
as long as LISP. If you're really going to call Python successful I don't 
know how you're going to describe Java.

> Please don't interpret this as "Lisp kicks C's ass."

I don't, and I certainly weren't implying "C kicks LISP's ass." I don't 
qualify for that sort of assertion.

> There are simply too many variables to lay the blame at Lisp's alleged
> functional basis.

That's a very good point. I did say "LISP represents a programming 
paradigm" but I don't think its (perceived?) failure has to do with the 
paradigm itself, rather with whether mere mortals can find application 
areas where the cost of assimilating that paradigm (and therefore learning 
the language) is justified by measurable gains.




--On Friday, September 04, 2009 15:36 -0600 Daniel Lyons 
<fusion@storytotell.org> wrote:

> Let me be a little pedantic.
>
> On Sep 4, 2009, at 2:18 PM, Eris Discordia wrote:
>> Above says precisely why I did. LISP is twofold hurtful for me as a
>> naive, below average hobbyist.
>
> FYI, it's been Lisp for a while.
>
>> For one thing the language constructs do not reflect the small
>> computer primitives I was taught somewhere around the beginning of
>> my education.
>
> Like what? The if statement, which was invented by Lisp? The loop
> statement, for expressing loops? It sounds like you got a dose of Scheme
> rather than Lisp to me.
>
>> For another, most (simple) problems I have had to deal with are far
>> better expressible in terms of those very primitives. In other
>> words, for a person of my (low) caliber, LISP is neither suited to
>> the family of problems I encounter nor suited to the machines I
>> solve them on.
>
> This hasn't been true for a while. Common Lisp is a general purpose
> language like any other. The only thing I have ever found obnoxious about
> CL was the filesystem API. Most CL implementations are compilers these
> days and they produce surprisingly efficient machine code. The Scheme
> situation is more diverse but you can definitely find performance if
> that's what you're eluding to.
>
>> Its claim to fame as the language for "wizards" remains.
>
> I think this has more to do with Lisp users being assholes than anything
> intrinsic about Lisp. This is one of the nice things about Clojure. It's
> a break from tradition in this regard, as well as many others.
>
>> Although, mind you, the AI paradigm LISP used to represent is long
>> deprecated (Rodney Brooks gives a good overview of this deprecation,
>> although not specifically targeting LISP, in "Cambrian Intelligence:
>> The Early History of the New AI"). One serious question today would
>> be: what's LISP _really_ good for? That it represents a specific
>> programming paradigm is not enough justification. Ideally, a
>> language should represent a specific application area, as does C,
>> i.e. general-purpose system and (low-level) application programming.
>
>
> It's as though you have the up-to-date negative propaganda, but not the
> up-to-date facts. Lisp is "really good for" the same kinds of things
> other general purpose languages are good for. The main benefits it had in
> AI were features that came from garbage collection and interactive
> development. You get those benefits today with lots of systems, but that
> doesn't mean they aren't still there in Lisp. An advantage it has these
> days is that it produces code that performs better than, say, Python or
> Perl. I definitely would not call being a "general purpose system" and
> suitability for "application programming" a "specific application area."
> This is like saying agglutinative languages are worse for conquering the
> world with than isolating languages because the Ottoman empire fell
> before the English empire.
>
> Please don't interpret this as "Lisp kicks C's ass." I'm saying, you're
> only seeing the negative half of the situation, and seeing too much
> causality. I think it's mostly happenstance. Lots of languages succeed
> despite having a killer app or app area. Python's a good example.
> Isolating the exact ingredients for the success of any language is
> probably impossible. I'd say only with C is it really clear what led to
> success, and it wasn't exclusively features of the language itself
> (though it was a part of it), but also that it came with Unix along with
> the source code. If the quacks had chosen C instead of Lisp for their "AI
> research" perhaps C would have taken a big hit during the so-called AI
> winter instead of Lisp. Perhaps if the Lisp machine vendors hadn't
> misunderstood basic economics so thoroughly, their machines would have
> become more common and taken Lisp with them the way Unix brought C. There
> are simply too many variables to lay the blame at Lisp's alleged
> functional basis. Especially today when languages like Haskell exist that
> take functional so much further they make Lisp look like a procedural
> language by comparison.
>
> —
> Daniel Lyons
>
>