LISP debunked:

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1244601&cid=28088725

slashdot

LISP has even lost the expression gap to C++ at this point.
>:(

LISP has even lost the expression gap to C++ at this point.
LOL Ok... I'm not saying LISP is the be-all end-all _{in this post} but that's ridiculous.

if you want to use slashdot do that, don't bring it here.

I GET IT NOW. THE WHOLE TIME YOU SUGGESTED THAT I USE LISP I WAS ACTUALLY GETTING TROLLED. HOLY FUCK THIS IS MAJOR.

>>1
THAT POSTER WROTE MORE WORDS IN ONE POST THAN spoiler prog spoiler WRITES IN A WHOLE MONTH

>>7
that would have been true about 7 months ago, but the content levelfor certain definitions of content here has increased substantially post-FV

It's been free and available and well known since the early 1990s, when it turned into every programmer's masturbatory fantasy of having a secret unknown knwoledge of the mastery of true power, in very much an illuminatus-but-bragging sort of way.

>>9
He's onto us! Quick! Hide your SICP!

+5, Interesting

>>10
Hide your SICP!

>>8
[citation needed]

>>13
I have no plans to actually produce the evidence at this time.
However, I'm sure you could make a graph of posts with respect to time (using the progscrape db) and the trend would be obvious.

http://newcastle.gumtree.com/newcastle/97/34917497.html

You were a cute, dark-haired girl...looked like a bit of a hippie chick.
I am none of those things

Leah rib

>>15
if u didnt speak to her there and then, you've blown it.

LISP debunked my ass.

1) LISP was always dead
2) LISP evolves. Which means the language features he desires, he could implement himself.

He said lisp has the same expressiveness with C++ nowadays. Let's see him writing SETF in C++, with support for generalized variables. Not saying it can't be done, but it can't be done as elegantly as LISP does it, which is proof of its expressiveness.

That you believe several books over the course of six years constitutes a resurgence, especially given the historic nature of the language, kind of goes a pretty long way towards proving my point about its nearly non-extant market share.

Don't get me wrong, I think LISP is a wonderful language. But, let's not do ourselves the disservice, please, of pretending that it's been a major player since the 1960s. If you look at the list of supposedly dead languages that majorly outpace LISP in real world usage measured either as new code or maintained code (eg Delphi, Clipper, Fortran, Cobol, PL/I, Ada, Forth, ANSI Pascal, Object Pascal, ColdFusion, pre-.NET ASP, all on both metrics) you get a clearer idea of where things actually stand.

If LISP is so amazing, and if LISP has first mover advantage over anything the average programmer has ever heard of, why is it so resoundingly a bit player?

There are downsides to LISP. Lots of them. Serious ones. It hasn't stayed this dead for 60 years because it's the tragic forgotten child of programming; every freshman who wants to sound educated thumps it at their first opportunity, frequently without ever having written a line (which is not to call you a freshman, just to point out how not-unknown it is.)

It's a little like SICP. If it's been that free, that well known and that easily accessable for 20 years, how come it's being discarded by the university that published it for curriculum, and how come its design principles are largely unseen even in the work of people who have read it?

There's a lot to be said for academic languages and academic exercises; they open our eyes to many new approaches to problems.

But don't kid yourself. They died for a reason. Why is it that all the supposedly awful languages and design strategies are dominant?

It's because they work. For all their warts, for all their maintenance problems, for all the infrastructure you have to write, they work.

New practical languages are occurring which adopt many of the lessons of LISP. Ruby got a lot of LISP's problems removed, though it's still got a lot of problems of its own; Haskell can say the same. Erlang's got most of those problems cleared up, and is a practical real world language for a lot of things.

But dude, if the most impressive thing you can find is the application of graph search to a complex web form with credit card processing that the typical college sophomore could throw together in about a month, I mean, I'm really not sure what to tell you. Orbitz is ridiculously slow for the amount of data it processes, its user interface is awful, it copes poorly with unexpected things like uncommon use of the browser back button, and I usually have to go to it first so that I can check everywhere else and then by the time I'm done everywhere else maybe Orbitz has finally finished its first search.

What Orbitz does that's impressive is their ability to negotiate ticket prices. I go there because they get the bottom dollar bid. If that's your idea of something you can hold up to show the success of LISP, I've got to ask you: why have you gotten down to rare occasional me-too projects as your shining beacon?

Yahoo! Stores was lisp too. (Note the past tense.)

Big whoop.

When it gets down to it, you should actually try writing something like that some time in LISP. Then try writing it in another language. It's not really all that different. It'll be maybe the dollar sign instead of the parentheses whose ink wears off on your keyboard, and the whatever other language you write will probably be somewhat bulkier (though if you're working in a language like Erlang, Haskell, Mozart-Oz or Forth, it'll be substantially shorter).

Meh. Ten extra letters to get a three line algorithm done. Trade that for real exceptions and a strong type system, and you've chosen C++. Trade that for the pi calculus (which is hella more expressive than the lambda, and typically completely foreign to the LISPers who preach syntax superiority) and native clustering, and you've chosen Erlang. Trade it for a rich browser integration and trivial forms, and you've chosen Rails. Trade it for integrated COMET, and you've chosen Dojo. Trade it for the ability to deploy on basically any hosting on earth, and you've chosen PHP.

People say they choose LISP for the things it lets them do, how it lets them express ideas. That's great. I know languages like that. They're awesome, and there are lots of them. Typically the LISPer who talks about how superior LISP is doesn't know many (or any) other exotic languages; other languages (including other members of the LISP family tree like clojure) have long since moved past LISP in expressiveness. Even C++ offers nearly everything that LISP does at this point; other than live code tree modification through macros, which aren't anywhere near as powerful as C++'s algorithm and container library IMO, LISP has even lost the expression gap to C++ at this point.

And I know, boo hiss, how could you ever say that, it's C++ which is the devil's stepchild; rah rah rah.

Prove me wrong with examples, if you're going to do it at all.

Am I saying that there's anything wrong with LISP? No, not at all. But when LISPers tell me how amazing their toy is and how it wouldn't be possible in any other language, I generally have to laugh sadly to myself, because it's almost always pretty damned straightforward in other languages too.

Yahoo! Stores could have been implemented in other languages too; that was just what Paul knew. There's a long history in the LISP movement of confusing infamiliarity with other languages and ignorance of what other languages offer combined, along with a delusion that macros are Christ's Only Key To Power, with a viable observation that other languages are dead in the water. This is nearly always followed by a tremendously shallow observation of some minor issues in either C++ or Java's syntax, then a confusing grammar issue, then declaring the three languages which together account for 60%-and-growing of Ohloh's measured development as obvious retarded backwaters.

And sure, there was a time at which science believed in the theory of Aether, too. But if you look at the numbers, there're a hell of a lot more people pushing pseudoscience than science under the label "everyone else is dumb."

LISP is a fine language. If it was better than every modern language, then it should have won. It's been free and available and well known since the early 1990s, when it turned into every programmer's masturbatory fantasy of having a secret unknown knwoledge of the mastery of true power, in very much an illuminatus-but-bragging sort of way.

And then they point to (cough) a ticket booking website and a once-dominant web store structure as proof. Because, y'know, Yahoo! Stores isn't ridiculously weak compared to the open source PHP web stores out there (and surely with large corporate backing, the one true language would have allowed this power disparity to emerge).

The only reason it hasn't happened to Orbitz is that setting up a national ticket broker requires major business savvy and as such isn't reasonable for the small time entrepreneur. There isn't a ticket broker which has anything even beginning to resemble impressive technology, but if I had to pick someone, it sure wouldn't be them.

So, c'mon. Is orbitz and a handful of books over six years really why you believe LISP isn't obviously a fallen hero?

LISP is dead. If you really need a LISP, move to a modern LISP such as Clojure or Scala, or a modern near-lisp like Ruby. You'll learn a lot about what LISP had kept from you.

Even Scheme is a step forward, TBH. And Scheme's just as dead of old age by now.

>>8
'post-FV'? Its tempting to get back here and waste a few weeks, but i understand its useless and counter-productive. I'd rather watch anime. I still browse here occasionally.
Oh and to clear some things, the recent trojan/DDOS has nothing to do with me. I don't need much more then a single computer to kill websites and 4chan isn't worth my time anymore.

>>21
FrozenVoid post detected

>>22
Not really. Too obvious of a troll to be FV. With FV, you were truly wondering whether he is just a retard or a very good troll.

>>23
There is easy way to see this is me..one moment

>>23
You've done it now.

>>18
u

>>23
I still have that script which removed posts by the person in question, but still retained the post numbers.

>>24
please don't start the whole invisible poster hoax again, it was never funny, just obnoxious.

His arguments are mostly pretty silly. The industry has long shown that the best technologies almost never have high adoption rates.

I submit that a major reason some languages are predominate in the industry is because they force programmers to adhere to conventions. These conventions everyone already understands. You don't have to re-explain them in every program you write. And yet it's still really hard to write code that made sense in those languages.

In contrast, LISP can write code that writes code that writes code (yo dawg, I hurd you like that). Powerful? Indeed. Expect anyone else to understand what the fuck you wrote? Yeah, ENTERPRISE QUALITY is so overrated.

>I submit that a major reason some languages are predominate in the industry is because they force programmers to adhere to conventions.

Python was designed to be the opposite of that.  Why not go to Python?

Oh and LISP actually does do that with the whole functional programming.

>>29
So in other words, it's not the best technology for their needs. In fact it's pretty horrible.
Now explain why almost no personal software projects are written in LISP either.

>>30
LISP actually does do that with the whole functional programming.
Lisp doesn't force you to use functional programming, it is a general purpose programming language.
I submit that a major reason some languages are predominate in the industry is because they force programmers to adhere to conventions.
Python was designed to be the opposite of that
You really think that? or HIBT? The whole point of python is that there is only one proper way to do things

>>29
yo dawg, I hurd you like that
Hello, Randall.

Hello, [m]

>>29
In contrast, LISP can write code that writes code that writes code (yo dawg, I hurd you like that). Powerful? Indeed. Expect anyone else to understand what the fuck you wrote? Yeah, ENTERPRISE QUALITY is so overrated.

That's the same FUD you anti-Lispers always spew. This just in: Lisp programmers aren't fucking morons and can follow conventions perfectly well.

>>35
>>35
If you aren't writing programs that write programs that write programs, then you miss out on a huge advantage of LISP: code == data.

>>31
toupée

>>36
and if you are writing programs that write programs that write programs, there are much better languages for that (factor, cat, joy, forth, etc.)

>>36
Why do you think this has anything to do with following conventions or writing readable code?

41 Name: Anonymous 2011-02-03 3:57

42 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-25 14:07

43 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 3:16

how do i wrote programs ???

44 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 4:09

Meh. Ten extra letters to get a three line algorithm done. Trade that for real exceptions and a strong type system, and you've chosen C++. Trade that for the pi calculus (which is hella more expressive than the lambda, and typically completely foreign to the LISPers who preach syntax superiority) and native clustering, and you've chosen Erlang. Trade it for a rich browser integration and trivial forms, and you've chosen Rails. Trade it for integrated COMET, and you've chosen Dojo. Trade it for the ability to deploy on basically any hosting on earth, and you've chosen PHP.
People actually believe that what this guy's saying has merit!

45 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 5:30

Haskell is the C++0x of functional programming languages.

46 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 5:55

)

47 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 6:46

>>45
Can you name one other purely functional programming language that's actually useful?

48 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 7:53

>>1
macros, which aren't anywhere near as powerful as C++'s algorithm and container library IMO
lol

49 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 8:13

modern near-lisp like Ruby
hahaha oh wow

50 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 8:44

51 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 10:57

>scala
>modern LISP

Why do i get the feeling that this person has never heard of Common Lisp


>scheme is a step forward

52 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 11:24

>common lisp
>using it
>not being symta masterrace
>2012
i seriously hope you goys don't do this

53 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 11:27

>>51,52

learn to fucking quote

54 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 11:43

check out my

55 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 11:44

... dubs

56 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 11:55

>>52`
>any time
>using symta

57 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 12:08

>>56[2012]`
>forgets code tags
>doesn't use symta on sparrowOS
[/2012]

58 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 12:29

>>53
Please forgive me, I forgot my space after the > and the appropriate [ o] to combine

59 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 12:35

>>56-58
back to /z/, please.
Who are you quoting?

60 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 13:02

And people think Slashdot have smart posters.

61 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 13:08

>>51-52,56-57
HoooOOOOLY SHIT YOUR MEME QUOTES ARE SO FUCKING EPIN FOR LE WIN /B/ROS XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD OMG I WET MY PANTS BECAUSE LE /G/REDDIT IS SO FUCKING FUNNY XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDdddddddDDDdddddddDdDdd

LE
EPIC
MEMES
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
>MY LE SIDES WHEN
>XDDDDDDD
XDDDDDD

62 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 13:51

Symta:

get FileName |c:[T:@4.utf8 L:@4.ul D:@L.y @Xs] [[T D] @Xs,r]

C/C++:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

typedef struct chunk {
  uint8_t Tag[5];
  uint32_t Len;
  uint8_t *Data;
  struct chunk *Next;
} chunk;

chunk *loadChunks(char *FileName) {
  int I, L;
  uint8_t *D, *P, *E;
  chunk *C=0, *T, *N;
  FILE *F = fopen(FileName, "r");
  fseek(F, 0, SEEK_END);
  L = ftell(F);
  D = P = (uint8_t *)malloc(L);
  E = P+L;
  fseek(F, 0, SEEK_SET);
  fread(D, 1, L, F);
  fclose(F);

  while (P < E) {
    T = (chunk *)malloc(sizeof(chunk));
    memcpy(T->Tag, P, 4);
    T->Tag[4] = 0;
    P += 4;
    T->Len = *(uint32_t *)P;
    P += 4;
    T->Data = (uint8_t *)malloc(T->Len);
    memcpy(T->Data, P, T->Len);
    P += T->Len;
    T->Next = C;
    C = T;
  }

  for (T = 0; C; C = N) {
    N = C->Next;
    C->Next = T;
    T = C;
  }

  free(D);
  return T;
}

63 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 13:58

>>19 lisp debunked my ass, too.

64 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-27 14:43

>>63
same

65 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-29 11:54

RIP lisp

66 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-29 13:16

dubs debunked

67 Name: Anonymous 2012-11-29 14:53

>>63
debunk my anus

68 Name: Anonymous 2012-12-01 17:29

Lisp is the only language. All other languages are libraries.

69 Name: Anonymous 2012-12-02 18:33

check 'em

70 Name: Anonymous 2012-12-03 9:20

>>61
That was le egin gro.

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