Currently reading.
Lisp may not be an acceptable Lisp* but Clojure just might be.
* http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.au/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html?m=1
Currently reading.
Lisp may not be an acceptable Lisp* but Clojure just might be.
* http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com.au/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html?m=1
Lisp needs to roll back to Lisp 1.5 and start over.
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Yikes, Clojure. Functional programming for object-oriented programmers is called Scala 😉
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Maybe but Scala is not an acceptable Lisp.
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Peter da Silva that’s my impression as well.
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lol, true it’s not as dense as ruby 🙂
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I hadn’t realized that LISP went through a mini-revival because of Paul Graham – I think it must be a sign of success that someone felt compelled to write an article in 2006 trying to convince me that LISP wasn’t really popular (I haven’t seen any articles trying to convince me that Pascal or COBOL aren’t really popular). LISP was dear to my heart in the mid 1980s, and Scheme is where I learned about closures (many years before they became trendy – so I guess I’m a hipster coder).
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I went in search of Scheme with OO and good POSIX coverage, and ended up with Ruby as the closest option.
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Ruby is an acceptable Lisp.
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Ruby isn’t Lisp.
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Yes, we know! http://www.randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an-acceptable-lisp
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Indeed JavaScript is a better analogue but it’s not Lisp either.
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Ruby and Javascript are not acceptable Lisps, because Lisp syntax is an essential part of what makes Lisp Lisp.
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Robert Downey Jr is an acceptable Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr is not Tony Stark.
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Fair enough. If you want something that’s got the style of a billionaire superhero but can’t actually do any of that superhero stuff, go with the actor.
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I agree that the syntax is key. It’s also the thing that had put me off going deeper into it for years. I’m taking that opportunity now. Common Lisp feels bloated and clunky but I like the feel of Clojure quite a bit. I feel like I can almost read it.
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Yes, Common LISP is a bit much — I remember struggling through Guy Steele’s book in the 1980s, and realizing even then (as a not-yet-cynical 20-something) that it was trying to do too much.  eLisp is messy, but it’s cool to have Emacs as the platform for running it, and we’ve seen lots of great stuff prototyped in Emacs/Elisp.  I started with InterLISP (the first language in which I coded for $$), about which the less said, the better.
Scheme is simple and elegant, plus it has closures, which young developers think they’re discovering now for the first time (the same way that the peak Baby Boomers thought they were inventing sex for the first time when they hit adolescence in the 1960s).
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I wish OO had made it into R6RS.
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Oh yes, and tail recursion. Â It was Scheme that taught me the elegance of tail recursion vs iteration (in languages that support it efficiently).
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