I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
when I have a better tool at hand.
I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
script that you have used for a job?
I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
Thanks, CC.
On 20 Oct, 14:36, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
If your definition of "useful" is "number of available jobs" (which
depending on ones point of view and current situation is a perfectly
fine criteria) then "yes". But there are many other metrics you could
use when evaluating a programming language. For me, Lisp is more
useful because I value having a REPL, macros, generic functions, etc.
--
Phil
http://phil.nullable.eu/
Hi CC,
On Oct 20, 8:36 am, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
> database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
> sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
> understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
> wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
> when I have a better tool at hand.
>
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
You've heard the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", right?
It sounds like you've already found a good solution to the problems
you solve at work, so why bother looking at Lisp?
When you get right down to it, Lisp just is a programming language.
Its language features are just one of many things that will factor
into your decision making process.
> This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
> those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
> isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
> script that you have used for a job?
You can use Lisp for anything just like you can use assembly or Perl
for anything. People do use Lisp for everything.
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
By that measure you should use Visual Basic.
It sounds like you are looking for justification to use Lisp at work,
or spend more time studying it. Is that true?
Once you really grok Lisp, it would make more sense why people use it
for language features alone. You should try working on "almost real
problems" like Project Euler or any of the coding quizzes or "Code
Katas". Work up to scripts, and then more "real" programs. You need to
exercise your chops on how the language works and why it is a nice
place to work.
The only justification you should need is your want to use it, anyway.
Grant Rettke wrote:
> Hi CC,
>
> On Oct 20, 8:36 am, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
>>database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
>>sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
>>understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
>>wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
>>when I have a better tool at hand.
>>
>>I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
>>reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
>>these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
>>see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
>>it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
>>Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
>
>
> You've heard the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", right?
>
> It sounds like you've already found a good solution to the problems
> you solve at work, so why bother looking at Lisp?
Because it might be broken and one does not know it? The salient
question then being, *why* has the OP been looking at Lisp? As happy as
they are, they might be sensing A Better Way(tm) is possible. And it is.
>
> When you get right down to it, Lisp just is a programming language.
Only in the sense of being a superset thereof. And the super bit is what
the OP seems to be in search of.
OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
kt
On Oct 20, 2:24 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Because it might be broken and one does not know it? The salient
> question then being, *why* has the OP been looking at Lisp? As happy as
> they are, they might be sensing A Better Way(tm) is possible. And it is.
Why? Because people who have a reputation for knowing what they are
talking about think that Lisp is worth using, people like Eric Raymond
and Paul Graham. Simply that. I certainly lack the experience to
personally validate their opinions, but I would like to acquire that
experience.
Plus the fact that it's fifty years old and still going strong, so
there must be something to it on that basis alone.
> > When you get right down to it, Lisp just is a programming language.
>
> Only in the sense of being a superset thereof. And the super bit is what
> the OP seems to be in search of.
Lisp is simply a tool. My question was what kinds of problems is the
tool suited for. Is this an unfair question to ask for someone who
doesn't know?
>
> OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
So ... what good is it?
This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
would appreciate an honest answer.
CC
On Oct 20, 3:40 pm, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> > OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
>
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
> Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
> that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
> particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
> suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
> Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
> processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
> Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
> So ... what good is it?
>
> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> would appreciate an honest answer.
O, you might check out my use of lisp as a text processing lang.
• Generate a Web Links Report.
http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_link_report.html
• Create sitemap.
http://xahlee.org/emacs/make_sitemap.html
• Make Downloadable Archive of a Website.
http://xahlee.org/emacs/make_download_copy.html
• Text Processing: Elisp vs Perl
http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp_text_processing_lang.html
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
cartercc wrote:
> On Oct 20, 2:24 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Because it might be broken and one does not know it? The salient
>>question then being, *why* has the OP been looking at Lisp? As happy as
>>they are, they might be sensing A Better Way(tm) is possible. And it is.
>
>
> Why?
That was just the most complimentary category from the RtL Highlight
film -- oh, look, the yobbos have deleted half of it again, including
"Seek and Ye Shall Find", for those who went looking for A Better
Way(tm). ie, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Happily
retracted in light of your persistently gratuitousnous unpleasantness.
Fortunately, we can fit you into other categories (unknown which have
been deleted):
> Because people who have a reputation for knowing what they are
> talking about think that Lisp is worth using, people like Eric Raymond
> and Paul Graham. Simply that. I certainly lack the experience to
> personally validate their opinions, but I would like to acquire that
> experience.
Ah, I think that is still there: "What Do They Know That I Do Not Know?"
>
> Plus the fact that it's fifty years old and still going strong, so
> there must be something to it on that basis alone.
Cool. If the yobbos were not slowly deleting it anyway that would be a
big category coming up, the Golden Anniversary.
>
>
>>>When you get right down to it, Lisp just is a programming language.
>>
>>Only in the sense of being a superset thereof. And the super bit is what
>>the OP seems to be in search of.
>
>
> Lisp is simply a tool. My question was what kinds of problems is the
> tool suited for. Is this an unfair question to ask for someone who
> doesn't know?
No, we get that question a lot, and most often the answer is that that
is the wrong question. Oh, and your truculent way of asking? That
*really* sucks.
If I had to give an answer it would simply be, the bigger the problem
(of any kind) the more Lisp is for it. Period.
>
>
>>OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
>
>
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
> Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
> that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
> particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
> suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
> Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
> processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
> Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
> So ... what good is it?
Processing data files, GUIs, and room temperature nuclear events.
I have never read more than three chapters of a programming language
book before propping it up some place handy and starting to code so
there is not much chance we'll understand each other but the short
answer is a classic: think you can or think you can't, either way you'll
be right.
>
> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> would appreciate an honest answer.
Don't worry. Someone who has never programmed in Lisp cannot insult it.
hth, kenny
On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> cartercc wrote:
>
>> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
>> would appreciate an honest answer.
>
> Don't worry. Someone who has never programmed in Lisp cannot insult it.
You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then yet be in
a position to slap anything.
Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>cartercc wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
>>>would appreciate an honest answer.
>>
>>Don't worry. Someone who has never programmed in Lisp cannot insult it.
>
>
> You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then yet be in
> a position to slap anything.
Have you ever seen a book on Prolog?
:)
kt
On Oct 21, 5:06 am, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> > On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>cartercc wrote:
>
> >>>This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> >>>would appreciate an honest answer.
>
> >>Don't worry. Someone who has never programmed in Lisp cannot insult it.
>
> > You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then yet be in
> > a position to slap anything.
>
> Have you ever seen a book on Prolog?
The prolog is unique for making diffucult tasks easy and easy tasks
menial.
>
> :)
>
> kt
On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:06:19 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>> On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then yet be in
>> a position to slap anything.
>
>Have you ever seen a book on Prolog?
>
Prolog isn't really all that hard - it's just wholly unnatural when
what you need is a procedure.
George
George Neuner wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:06:19 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>
>>>On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then yet be in
>>>a position to slap anything.
>>
>>Have you ever seen a book on Prolog?
>>
>
>
> Prolog isn't really all that hard - it's just wholly unnatural when
> what you need is a procedure.
Cool. I think we just disagreed to agree.
:)
kt
ps. I'd like to think that was an original mot, but I suspect Google is
not only going to disappoint me but take me to a website of that name. k
Kenny wrote:
> George Neuner wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:06:19 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> You can't claim that you couldn't make sense of four books, and then
>>>> yet be in
>>>> a position to slap anything.
>>>
>>>
>>> Have you ever seen a book on Prolog?
>>>
>>
>>
>> Prolog isn't really all that hard - it's just wholly unnatural when
>> what you need is a procedure.
>
>
> Cool. I think we just disagreed to agree.
>
> :)
>
> kt
>
> ps. I'd like to think that was an original mot, but I suspect Google is
> not only going to disappoint me but take me to a website of that name. k
Even better: half beat me to it, and half got "agree to disagree"
backwards. :)
kt
On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool. I think we just disagreed to agree.
>
>:)
>
> kt
>
> ps. I'd like to think that was an original mot, but I suspect Google is
> not only going to disappoint me but take me to a website of that name.
Actually, the disappointment may be deeper than you suspected; googling reveals
that stupid people out there, would you believe it, are writing "disagree to
agree" by mistake, rather than as a joke!
Kaz Kylheku wrote:
> On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Cool. I think we just disagreed to agree.
>>
>>:)
>>
>>kt
>>
>>ps. I'd like to think that was an original mot, but I suspect Google is
>>not only going to disappoint me but take me to a website of that name.
>
>
> Actually, the disappointment may be deeper than you suspected; googling reveals
> that stupid people out there, would you believe it, are writing "disagree to
> agree" by mistake, rather than as a joke!
Yep, and that is going to keep cheerful all week. :)
Reminds me of my writer friend, The Glory of Their Times guy. It drove
him nuts that people said, "I could care less what you think."
I did not know how to help him. :)
kt
Kenny <·········@gmail.com> writes:
> Kaz Kylheku wrote:
>> On 2008-10-21, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Cool. I think we just disagreed to agree.
>>>
>>>:)
>>>
>>>kt
>>>
>>> ps. I'd like to think that was an original mot, but I suspect
>>> Google is not only going to disappoint me but take me to a website
>>> of that name.
>> Actually, the disappointment may be deeper than you suspected;
>> googling reveals
>> that stupid people out there, would you believe it, are writing "disagree to
>> agree" by mistake, rather than as a joke!
>
> Yep, and that is going to keep cheerful all week. :)
>
> Reminds me of my writer friend, The Glory of Their Times guy. It drove
> him nuts that people said, "I could care less what you think."
>
> I did not know how to help him. :)
He should just thank them for caring.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
I'm brand new to Lisp and programming in general (about two weeks of
casual study with Lisp, fooling around with basic on a TRS-80 in
junior high, some Pascal, and a tiny bit of Java), and I have to say
that if you didn't get it, then you probably didn't try hard enough.
Even so, a book that helped me start to get it as a complete newbie
has been "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction" by Touretzky.
I'm still just building basic functions and invoking them, but when I
learn more I plan on making a virtual tabletop for playing card games,
wargames, and pen and paper RPGs online. So that's one possible
example of how Lisp can be used. Even in my first few weeks I've read
the quote given upthread, read about the video game series Jak and
Daxter, a protein folding modeling project using an offshoot of Lisp,
a major shopping cart app that was bought by Yahoo, and a few others
that are slipping my mind. I found all of this with a few searched on
Google when I was considering the language.
Anyway, I hope I didn't sound like a jerk here, but I wanted to let
you know that the information on what Lisp is good for is out there if
you want to find it.
On 2008-10-20, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it.
You read four books from cover to cover and not made sense of them?
This points at a lack of material upstairs.
One can only wonder what sort of Java and Perl you are writing.
On Oct 20, 8:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> You read four books from cover to cover and not made sense of them?
No, I bought ONE book and read through it. I've found that this
particular book (Graham) is considered rather dense and not a good
first book. The second book was the 'Little Lisper' which I've NEVER
found recommended as a good learning tool. The third book was PCL,
which IS a good book, but I found the lack of end of chapter exercises
frustrating. The book that finally was the breakthrough 'for me' was
Wilenski. Maybe it was the breakthrough because I had the experience
of struggling through all the others, I don't know, but having worked
through that I am not back with 'ANSI Lisp' (for what is really the
third time) and it's making a lot more sense.
> This points at a lack of material upstairs.
I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
of another large public university. I have tried for TWO years to
start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
both are unfriendly to Lisp. Typical comments from academics (I am not
an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
was still said.
> One can only wonder what sort of Java and Perl you are writing.
Stuff that works. I'm pretty quick on getting working scripts -- maybe
not so good on maintenance.
CC
cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
> On Oct 20, 8:25�pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>> This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>
> I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
> CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
> certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
> people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
> to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
This explains the issues you're having with Lisp. At the surface,
Lisp looks like any other language to a large extent, and criticisms
of it are usually based on comparisons with other languages (e.g too
many parens, strange use of prefix notation, etc). But to "get" Lisp,
you must abandon everything you've learned before, and since you've
learned so much, you've been "ruined" in a sense, like so many other
programmers. In order to approach Lisp successfully, you must forget
most of what you've learned, and start from scratch.
These guys on c.l.l may appear mean and degrading, and perhaps they've
forgotten why they have settled into that kind of behavior, but if you
think of it as either EST-like, or else like armed services boot-camp,
then perhaps it becomes more understandable, if not more palatable.
And to be specific, at least suspend all that you've learned about CS,
so that you can understand what the big deal is about it.
Fortunately, Lisp is not such an intense tear-down-then-build-up
training as the examples I provided; I usually like to relate it to
learning a hard but beautiful musical instrument; the discipline and
practise you put into it will directly reflect the success you have in
making music from it.
> I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
> of another large public university. I have tried for TWO years to
> start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
> both are unfriendly to Lisp. Typical comments from academics (I am not
> an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
> 'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
> practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
> was still said.
Of course. People laugh all the time at tough disciplines; they
trivialize them and put them down, usually because they have no
intention of going through that discipline themselves. Those are the
first voices you must shut out if you ever hope to succeed in the
discipline of Lisp.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig wrote:
> cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>On Oct 20, 8:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>>
>>I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
>>CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
>>certifications.
And you are a grad student now in something else so let us put you down
as smart and rudderless. And apparently Lisp does not like to be cruised
by rudderless vessels, it keeps pitching you up on the shore. Speaking
of shores, you should see my "Just Write Applications!" rant. If you
just keep sticking your toe in the water of course you'll never make any
headway. I need help making this metaphor even worse. Throw me a life
preserver, someone...
>If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
>>people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
>>to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
>
>
> This explains the issues you're having with Lisp. At the surface,
> Lisp looks like any other language to a large extent, and criticisms
> of it are usually based on comparisons with other languages (e.g too
> many parens, strange use of prefix notation, etc). But to "get" Lisp,
> you must abandon everything you've learned before, and since you've
> learned so much, you've been "ruined" in a sense, like so many other
> programmers. In order to approach Lisp successfully, you must forget
> most of what you've learned, and start from scratch.
Nah, remember: the OP just piles up credits while writing a minimum of
code and nailing up a maximum of wall plaques. Hasn't learned anything,
just passed some exams. There's a difference.
>
> These guys on c.l.l may appear mean and degrading, and perhaps they've
> forgotten why they have settled into that kind of behavior, but if you
> think of it as either EST-like, or else like armed services boot-camp,
> then perhaps it becomes more understandable, if not more palatable.
Nonsense. Half the people who come in here looking for help get treated
like royalty and fall all over themselves thanking us for the great and
copious help. Scroll back a week for the most recent.
Gee, what then explains the different experiences people have? Oh, gosh,
possibly the noob is an interesting variable? <sigh>
Meanwhile, the careful reader will note that even the worst of the
Savages is also providing good-faith (and good) counsel. Again, check
out comp.lang.javascript if you want to see what real jerks are like. We
Savages have much to learn.
> And to be specific, at least suspend all that you've learned about CS,
> so that you can understand what the big deal is about it.
> Fortunately, Lisp is not such an intense tear-down-then-build-up
> training as the examples I provided; I usually like to relate it to
> learning a hard but beautiful musical instrument; the discipline and
> practise you put into it will directly reflect the success you have in
> making music from it.
>
>
>>I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
>>of another large public university.
Sounds like fun, actually.
>> I have tried for TWO years to
>>start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
>>both are unfriendly to Lisp. Typical comments from academics (I am not
>>an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
>>'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
>>practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
>>was still said.
Don't shoot! I am a Javascript programmer now.
hth, kzo
Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote on Tue, 21 Oct 2008:
> And apparently Lisp does not like to be cruised by rudderless vessels, it
> keeps pitching you up on the shore. Speaking of shores, you should see my
> "Just Write Applications!" rant. If you just keep sticking your toe in the
> water of course you'll never make any headway. I need help making this
> metaphor even worse. Throw me a life preserver, someone...
Other languages are competing in the America's Cup yacht race, and are
thrilled to invent a winged keel. Lisp is a nuclear submarine, easily
winning the race, hidden beneath the surface...
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Politically-incorrect T-Shirt idea: What part of "AWW C'MON, PLEASE?" don't you
understand? -- Roger Crew
Kenny <·········@gmail.com> writes:
> Duane Rettig wrote:
>> These guys on c.l.l may appear mean and degrading, and perhaps
>> they've
>> forgotten why they have settled into that kind of behavior, but if you
>> think of it as either EST-like, or else like armed services boot-camp,
>> then perhaps it becomes more understandable, if not more palatable.
>
> Nonsense. Half the people who come in here looking for help get
Half the people? What is the glass then, half empty or half full? I
personally would have actually guessed a lot more than half, but for
those less-than-half who have had a "bad experience", it tints the
flavor of the group fairly strongly in their eyes.
Not that it matters.
> treated like royalty and fall all over themselves thanking us for the
> great and copious help. Scroll back a week for the most recent.
>
> Gee, what then explains the different experiences people have? Oh,
> gosh, possibly the noob is an interesting variable? <sigh>
Yes, it's the noob. Someone who knows nothing is a lot easier to
teach than someone who knows everything. And the one who knows
nothing is less likely to _think_ they know everything, which is the
real test of the openness of someone coming into this newsgroup. This
group tends to eat know-it-alls alive. But I'm not even talking about
those who are open here, in this part of this thread; it is not
apropos to this situation.
> Meanwhile, the careful reader will note that even the worst of the
> Savages is also providing good-faith (and good) counsel. Again, check
> out comp.lang.javascript if you want to see what real jerks are
> like. We Savages have much to learn.
Who's calling anyone a jerk? Read again what I said: "may appear to
be mean and degrading". That doesn't mean that you are, though you
obviously fall into the category of those who appear mean and
degrading to those who aren't prepared for you, or who can't tell when
you are joking and when you are serious. Instead I'm talking about
the function you and others here perform when you shock people into
having to rethink their assumptions, which is necessary to understand
the discipline. The more assumptions, the more the shock, and the more
probability of being offended right out of the newsgroup.
You want to see a real jerk? You can't find any in newsgroups; these
groups are peer discussions, with no real authority; if you want to
experience a real jerk, sign up for a top-notch orchestra, preferably
one whose conductor has a reputation for breaking his baton often.
Now there's a situation where you as a player will feel degraded and
small, _and_ there's no option to talk back or complain. And the
irony is; such abuse counts as discipline, and in general the result
is a well-trained orchestra which turns out incredible music that can
hardly be gotten any other way.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig wrote:
> Kenny <·········@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>Duane Rettig wrote:
>>
>>>These guys on c.l.l may appear mean and degrading, and perhaps
>>>they've
>>>forgotten why they have settled into that kind of behavior, but if you
>>>think of it as either EST-like, or else like armed services boot-camp,
>>>then perhaps it becomes more understandable, if not more palatable.
>>
>>Nonsense. Half the people who come in here looking for help get
>
>
> Half the people? What is the glass then, half empty or half full?\
We agree later that the noob is a vital parameter, so the empty bit is
only those who get treated inappropriately and if you want to have real
fun with fractions I would say the ratio of Jon the Doctors treated
respectfully in error to Joe the Programmers treated disprespectfully in
error approaches infinity. (Parse that!)
> I
> personally would have actually guessed a lot more than half,
You are looking for accuracy? From /me/?
> but for
> those less-than-half who have had a "bad experience", it tints the
> flavor of the group fairly strongly in their eyes.
And with luck they Just Go Away. Many are called, few are chosen. (I'll
Google that shortly, maybe /that/ is an original.)
>
> Not that it matters.
>
I am a Buddhist. Everything matters. Or nothing. We are still working on
the details.
>
>>treated like royalty and fall all over themselves thanking us for the
>>great and copious help. Scroll back a week for the most recent.
>>
>>Gee, what then explains the different experiences people have? Oh,
>>gosh, possibly the noob is an interesting variable? <sigh>
>
>
> Yes, it's the noob. Someone who knows nothing is a lot easier to
> teach than someone who knows everything. And the one who knows
> nothing is less likely to _think_ they know everything, which is the
> real test of the openness of someone coming into this newsgroup. This
> group tends to eat know-it-alls alive. But I'm not even talking about
> those who are open here, in this part of this thread; it is not
> apropos to this situation.
>
>
>>Meanwhile, the careful reader will note that even the worst of the
>>Savages is also providing good-faith (and good) counsel. Again, check
>>out comp.lang.javascript if you want to see what real jerks are
>>like. We Savages have much to learn.
>
>
> Who's calling anyone a jerk? Read again what I said: "may appear to
> be mean and degrading".
I know, I was hoping for an upgrade.
> That doesn't mean that you are, though you
> obviously fall into the category of those who appear mean and
> degrading to those who aren't prepared for you, or who can't tell when
> you are joking and when you are serious.
I like the ones who do their homework. WTF?, they think, Google a bit
and then come back laughing. Some do not have to, they can tell when
someone is chewing the scenery, and I deliberately go over the top to
make that clearer. The fact that before the post is over I provide good
leads and answer their questions hopefully confuses them further.
At the same time, I listen for signs of vulnerability. Perhaps you can
guess at the half-dozen regulars in my no-strafe zone. But anyone
demonstrating Usenet familiarity is assumed to be fair game, and the
more loquacious and pontific they are the more assumed.
But manifest sufficient fragility and in the NSZ they go.
This is being taped for a Reality TV series isn't it?
> Instead I'm talking about
> the function you and others here perform when you shock people into
> having to rethink their assumptions, which is necessary to understand
> the discipline. The more assumptions, the more the shock, and the more
> probability of being offended right out of the newsgroup.
Ah, but this is why it is so important to observe that most Savages also
provide solid information along with the stick whack -- anyone *merely*
offended was just trolling.
I took a few punches over in c.l.javascript, covered up, didn't
retaliate, kept working, pretty soon folks were taking me seriously. Oh,
we have a live one.
Speaking of JS, I better get back to work.
>
> You want to see a real jerk? You can't find any in newsgroups; these
> groups are peer discussions, with no real authority; if you want to
> experience a real jerk, sign up for a top-notch orchestra, preferably
> one whose conductor has a reputation for breaking his baton often.
> Now there's a situation where you as a player will feel degraded and
> small, _and_ there's no option to talk back or complain. And the
> irony is; such abuse counts as discipline, and in general the result
> is a well-trained orchestra which turns out incredible music that can
> hardly be gotten any other way.
>
Interesting. Different than baseball managers. Billy Martin did great,
Francona and Torre do better. Maybe musicians are tougher?
kt
Kenny escribi�:
>
> And with luck they Just Go Away. Many are called, few are chosen. (I'll
> Google that shortly, maybe /that/ is an original.)
http://bible.cc/matthew/22-14.htm
I would have chosen someone less prominent to plagiarize. :)
Leandro
Leandro Rios wrote:
> Kenny escribi�:
>
>>
>> And with luck they Just Go Away. Many are called, few are chosen.
>> (I'll Google that shortly, maybe /that/ is an original.)
Hmmm, maybe you are right, Duane. People do not know when I am joking. :)
>
>
> http://bible.cc/matthew/22-14.htm
Ouch on the anti-Semitism. But Sarah Palin might want to use that to
really get the country divided. She did rural/urban yesterday, can do
Christion/Jew tomorrow. I'll send it along.
Meanwhile...
"And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which
had not on a wedding garment: 12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how
camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was
speechless. 13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and
foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall
be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are
chosen."
Last time I crash a wedding.
kzo
Kenny escribi�:
> Leandro Rios wrote:
>> Kenny escribi�:
>>
>>>
>>> And with luck they Just Go Away. Many are called, few are chosen.
>>> (I'll Google that shortly, maybe /that/ is an original.)
>
> Hmmm, maybe you are right, Duane. People do not know when I am joking. :)
You're right. After so much lurking here I should have known better...
>
>>
>>
>> http://bible.cc/matthew/22-14.htm
>
> Ouch on the anti-Semitism.
Ouch, I didn't read the commentaries. Will be more careful next time, sorry.
> But Sarah Palin might want to use that to
> really get the country divided. She did rural/urban yesterday, can do
> Christion/Jew tomorrow. I'll send it along.
>
> Meanwhile...
>
> "And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which
> had not on a wedding garment: 12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how
> camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was
> speechless. 13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and
> foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall
> be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are
> chosen."
>
Carlin's punchline: "But He loves you."
> Last time I crash a wedding.
:)
Leandro
>
> kzo
Leandro Rios wrote:
> Kenny escribi�:
>
>> Leandro Rios wrote:
>>
>>> Kenny escribi�:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> And with luck they Just Go Away. Many are called, few are chosen.
>>>> (I'll Google that shortly, maybe /that/ is an original.)
>>
>>
>> Hmmm, maybe you are right, Duane. People do not know when I am joking. :)
>
>
> You're right. After so much lurking here I should have known better...
It takes a while. And then if you want a laugh you should see trying to
convince someone I am *not* joking. Cost me $800 once, in fact.
"Ken, you put my snowboard on the bus, right?"
"What? No."
"Yeah, you did."
"No, I did not."
"Right, haha, very funny."
"Louis, I am telling you. I did not put your gear on the bus."
"Riiiight."
Four hours later as we unload the equipment from the bus.
"Ken, where is my snowboard?"
>
> Carlin's punchline: "But He loves you."
Lenny Bruce was not bad on religion either. Meanwhile, speaking of our
Jewish brothers, I am seeing Don Rickles on Broadway Friday night, can't
wait to see him live, the hockey puck.
:)
kzo
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <gdnc12$vhn$1@aioe.org>
On 2008-10-21 17:47:38 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> said:
> Billy Martin did great, Francona and Torre do better. Maybe musicians
> are tougher?
Musicians, unlike professional baseball players, are not overpaid prima
donnas - save for the the literal prima donnas of course ;^)
Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
> On 2008-10-21 17:47:38 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> said:
>
>> Billy Martin did great, Francona and Torre do better. Maybe musicians
>> are tougher?
>
>
> Musicians, unlike professional baseball players, are not overpaid prima
> donnas - save for the the literal prima donnas of course ;^)
>
Yeah, I thought about the salary differential after posting. Must be fun
managing a group where everyone gets paid ten times you and none of
them can be fired, but you normally are when things go bad.
kt
On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:42:26 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
>> On 2008-10-21 17:47:38 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> Billy Martin did great, Francona and Torre do better. Maybe musicians
>>> are tougher?
>>
>>
>> Musicians, unlike professional baseball players, are not overpaid prima
>> donnas - save for the the literal prima donnas of course ;^)
>>
>
>Yeah, I thought about the salary differential after posting. Must be fun
> managing a group where everyone gets paid ten times you and none of
>them can be fired, but you normally are when things go bad.
Sports players are prima donnas too. Coaches have a near impossible
job - they have to manage a bunch of whiny babies that make far more
money and don't have to listen to anything the coach says so long as
the front office likes their performance. And then they get the
credit for a good season and the coach gets the blame for a bad one.
<rant>
I certainly couldn't have done Terry Francona's job: I don't care how
many home runs Manny Ramirez hit, he would have had my boot up his ass
every time he didn't run down a line drive to left field and been
benched for standing at the plate waiting to see if the ball cleared
the wall. Ramirez can run - I've seen it - but only when *he* wants
to. For the amount the Red Sox paid him, he should damn well run
everywhere as far as I'm concerned. Ramirez is a lousy all around
player that I never would have considered hired whatever his batting
skills.
<\rant>
George
George Neuner wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:42:26 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
>>
>>>On 2008-10-21 17:47:38 -0400, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> said:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Billy Martin did great, Francona and Torre do better. Maybe musicians
>>>>are tougher?
>>>
>>>
>>>Musicians, unlike professional baseball players, are not overpaid prima
>>>donnas - save for the the literal prima donnas of course ;^)
>>>
>>
>>Yeah, I thought about the salary differential after posting. Must be fun
>> managing a group where everyone gets paid ten times you and none of
>>them can be fired, but you normally are when things go bad.
>
>
> Sports players are prima donnas too. Coaches have a near impossible
> job - they have to manage a bunch of whiny babies that make far more
> money and don't have to listen to anything the coach says so long as
> the front office likes their performance. And then they get the
> credit for a good season and the coach gets the blame for a bad one.
>
> <rant>
> I certainly couldn't have done Terry Francona's job: I don't care how
> many home runs Manny Ramirez hit, he would have had my boot up his ass
> every time he didn't run down a line drive to left field and been
> benched for standing at the plate waiting to see if the ball cleared
> the wall. Ramirez can run - I've seen it - but only when *he* wants
> to. For the amount the Red Sox paid him, he should damn well run
> everywhere as far as I'm concerned. Ramirez is a lousy all around
> player that I never would have considered hired whatever his batting
> skills.
> <\rant>
>
I turned around on Manny when I heard that he took extra practice to get
better at playing balls off the monster, and if you noticed he got quite
good at it and often threw guys out at second by taking the ball off the
wall so cleanly. And his hitting was not just a gift, he worked at that,
too. As for the act at home plate, that is the opposing team's concern
and I can expect a knockdown at my next at bat, it is not my team's
concern.
Of more concern was his tendency to skip a game or ten out of the blue
claiming a knee problem. Bzzzzt!
Showboating has made sports a lot more fun, given it a lot more
personality. It is hard on the old skoolers who grew up in the days of
exaggerated modesty -- I'll never forget how people reacted to Ali's
(still Clay, actually) act leading up to his first fight with Liston.
Talk about culture shock.
The only thing that gets me is celebrating a routine tackle in football
when the celebrant's team is down forty points. That seems a little out
of place given the larger picture of getting crushed in the game.
kt
Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
| >I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees
| >in CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
| >certifications.
|
| And you are a grad student now in something else so let us put you down
| as smart and rudderless. And apparently Lisp does not like to be cruised
| by rudderless vessels, it keeps pitching you up on the shore. Speaking
| of shores, you should see my "Just Write Applications!" rant. If you
| just keep sticking your toe in the water of course you'll never make any
| headway. I need help making this metaphor even worse. Throw me a life
| preserver, someone...
+---------------
How about a change of analogy [courtesy of my buddhist guru]?
If you dig 100 one-foot-deep holes all over the land, you'll
never strike water, but if you dig a single 100'-deep hole,
you might. [But no guarantees. You still need to dig in the
right place.]
In either analogy the mantra remains: "Just Write Applications!"
Pick a serious coding task, hopefully something that you *want*
to do and that somebody [yourself and/or others] *want* to use,
and "just do it"!! In Common Lisp, of course. You'll learn more
than you ever thought you could.
Third analogy: Reading all of the roadmaps and travel guides in
the world will never get you from your couch to the ski slope.
You actually have to *go* there!
Etc.
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
From: Patrick May
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2wsg0izmq.fsf@spe.com>
····@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
> How about a change of analogy [courtesy of my buddhist guru]? If you
> dig 100 one-foot-deep holes all over the land, you'll never strike
> water, but if you dig a single 100'-deep hole, you might. [But no
> guarantees. You still need to dig in the right place.]
>
> In either analogy the mantra remains: "Just Write Applications!"
Writers write. Runners run. Programmers program. There is no
becoming, there is just being.
Where is that enlightenment, I know I left it around here
somewhere....
Regards,
Patrick
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S P Engineering, Inc. | Large scale, mission-critical, distributed OO
| systems design and implementation.
···@spe.com | (C++, Java, Common Lisp, Jini, middleware, SOA)
On Oct 21, 8:43 am, Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote:
> cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Oct 20, 8:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>
> > I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
> > CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
> > certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
> > people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
> > to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
>
> This explains the issues you're having with Lisp. At the surface,
> Lisp looks like any other language to a large extent, and criticisms
> of it are usually based on comparisons with other languages (e.g too
> many parens, strange use of prefix notation, etc). But to "get" Lisp,
> you must abandon everything you've learned before, and since you've
> learned so much, you've been "ruined" in a sense, like so many other
> programmers. In order to approach Lisp successfully, you must forget
> most of what you've learned, and start from scratch.
another lisp fantasy bullshit.
The same thing can be said for Mathematica, prolog, forth, smalltalk,
and even Java. (i note there's a very popular book called “Thinking In
Java”, whose premise is that you need to mold your thoughts in the
java way to become a master of it)
> These guys on c.l.l may appear mean and degrading, and perhaps they've
> forgotten why they have settled into that kind of behavior, but if you
> think of it as either EST-like, or else like armed services boot-camp,
> then perhaps it becomes more understandable, if not more palatable.
> And to be specific, at least suspend all that you've learned about CS,
> so that you can understand what the big deal is about it.
> Fortunately, Lisp is not such an intense tear-down-then-build-up
> training as the examples I provided; I usually like to relate it to
> learning a hard but beautiful musical instrument; the discipline and
> practise you put into it will directly reflect the success you have in
> making music from it.
>
> > I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
> > of another large public university. I have tried for TWO years to
> > start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
> > both are unfriendly to Lisp. Typical comments from academics (I am not
> > an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
> > 'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
> > practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
> > was still said.
>
> Of course. People laugh all the time at tough disciplines; they
> trivialize them and put them down, usually because they have no
> intention of going through that discipline themselves. Those are the
> first voices you must shut out if you ever hope to succeed in the
> discipline of Lisp.
yes, you might want to try to become a ethnologist, or Shakespear
historian, or entomologist.
O, speaking of musical instruments, perhaps you forgot the power and
beauty of the ocarina, huqin, bagpipe. Master these and you'll be
ready for the industry!
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> writes:
> On Oct 21, 8:43 am, Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote:
>> cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
>> > On Oct 20, 8:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>>
>> > I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
>> > CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
>> > certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
>> > people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
>> > to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
>>
>> This explains the issues you're having with Lisp. At the surface,
>> Lisp looks like any other language to a large extent, and criticisms
>> of it are usually based on comparisons with other languages (e.g too
>> many parens, strange use of prefix notation, etc). But to "get" Lisp,
>> you must abandon everything you've learned before, and since you've
>> learned so much, you've been "ruined" in a sense, like so many other
>> programmers. In order to approach Lisp successfully, you must forget
>> most of what you've learned, and start from scratch.
>
> another lisp fantasy bullshit.
Thanks, I'll take that compliment.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig wrote:
> ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>On Oct 21, 8:43 am, Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> wrote:
>>
>>>cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>>On Oct 20, 8:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>>>
>>>>I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in
>>>>CS and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
>>>>certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more
>>>>people would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according
>>>>to Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
>>>
>>>This explains the issues you're having with Lisp. At the surface,
>>>Lisp looks like any other language to a large extent, and criticisms
>>>of it are usually based on comparisons with other languages (e.g too
>>>many parens, strange use of prefix notation, etc). But to "get" Lisp,
>>>you must abandon everything you've learned before, and since you've
>>>learned so much, you've been "ruined" in a sense, like so many other
>>>programmers. In order to approach Lisp successfully, you must forget
>>>most of what you've learned, and start from scratch.
>>
>>another lisp fantasy bullshit.
>
>
> Thanks, I'll take that compliment.
>
My personal polestars north and south of Usenet comity interact!
...uh-oh. Hope this isn't one of those matter anti-matter deals.
kxo (loading up on canned goods and shotgun shells)
cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
> I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
> of another large public university. I have tried for TWO years to
> start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
> both are unfriendly to Lisp. Typical comments from academics (I am not
> an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
> 'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
> practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
> was still said.
Lots of people with various credentials and specializations like to put
down Lisp for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure why this is; one even
gets resistance towards it from programming language people ("no strong
typing", "no syntax", various oddities like that). But you can
occasionally find respect for it -- one of the professors in my lab (I'm
a CS grad student in HCI) respects and has used Common Lisp. Some of
the AI people here like it. I haven't found much love for it from the
programming language profs, though.
It's worth digging into, though, in spite of the bad rap. I'm convinced
that a lot of the reason people don't like it is that they don't
understand it, and they don't bother to try to understand it because
they don't see any merit in it (fueled, in part, but not liking it). A
rather nasty vicious cycle, but it keeps plenty of people away from it.
And then when people are required to use it for some course, they
frequently come away not liking it, and I'm not entirely sure why.
Now, as to learning -- the way I learned is one you listed as not having
worked, so I'm not sure if there's anything I can say. I learned with
PCL, but didn't find the lack of exercises a hindrance; I rarely do
exercises anyway. I just read through several chapters of the book,
then started applying it to my particular problems and referred back to
PCL and the HyperSpec to figure more out as I went along, and that's
still what I do to continue develop my relatively-feeble skills.
- Michael
--
mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
Confused by the strange files? I cryptographically sign my messages.
For more information see <http://www.elehack.net/resources/gpg>.
On 2008-10-21, Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> wrote:
> cartercc wrote:
>
>> I have ... a doctorate (not in CS or SE)
>
> In Whining?
Nope, lying and trolling.
On 2008-10-21, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I work for one large public university and am in the graduate program
> of another large public university. I have tried for TWO years to
> start a LUG at either/both, and I can tell you that the faculty of
> both are unfriendly to Lisp.
Really? You mean you arranged some regular meetings for Lisp users, but only
anti-Lisp hecklers showed up to crash the party?
Or were you trying to form a LUG by evangelizing Lisp around campus?
If you were half as annoying as you are here, well, no surprise.
Typical comments from academics (I am not
> an academic, yet!) with impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.'
> 'Lisp has too many parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything
> practical.' 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but
> was still said.
The relevant observation is: which Lisp user was that comment said to?
The socially apt will immediately recognize this as meaning ``YOU should be
shot''. Remember, the academic who uttered that thinks you are a Lisp user,
and he said that to you. I.e. ``the group of people of which you are a member
should be shot.'' It's about you, not about Lisp.
These impressive CV's know that you don't have clue. Stop bothering them.
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:45:14 -0700, cartercc wrote:
> I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in CS
> and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
> certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more people
> would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according to
> Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
It's different. I don't really consider it deep compared with other
languages. At least Lisp itself. CL might be a different beast due to
CLOS, but to be able to write programs in Lisp one doesn't need that much
knowledge.
> Typical comments from academics (I am not an academic, yet!) with
> impressive CVs are: 'Lisp is a dead language.' 'Lisp has too many
> parenthesises.' 'Lisp isn't useful for anything practical.'
> 'Lispers ought to be shot.' Last comment said in jest but was still
> said.
Talking about stuff one hasn't tried usually does not lead to meaningful
opinions.
I'd also be intersted in a Lisp User Group around here, but I think there
isn't enough interest around here. And it's useful to have people who
really grok Lisp around when starting such a group.
regards,
Marek
Marek Kubica wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:45:14 -0700, cartercc wrote:
>
>
>>I admitted to ignorance, not stupidity. I have two Masters degrees in CS
>>and SE, a doctorate (not in CS or SE), and six technical
>>certifications. If Lisp were easy, don't you thing that many more people
>>would be using it? Perhaps the reason it's so useful (according to
>>Raymond and Graham) is BECAUSE it's so deep.
>
>
> It's different. I don't really consider it deep compared with other
> languages. At least Lisp itself. CL might be a different beast due to
> CLOS, but to be able to write programs in Lisp one doesn't need that much
> knowledge.
Are you saying Lisp is just an ordinary programming language?
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/02/ooh-ooh-my-turn-why-lisp.html
Word up.
kt
On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:44:47 -0400, Kenny wrote:
> Are you saying Lisp is just an ordinary programming language?
> http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/02/ooh-ooh-my-turn-why-
lisp.html
Yeah. Lisp is probably the only language which is used more for meta-
discussions about it than for actual coding. Uh, well, speaking of it...
thanks for your "STFU and finally start writing code" video-rant. That's
one of the more valuable advices I got in Lisp-land.
regards,
Marek
Marek Kubica wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:44:47 -0400, Kenny wrote:
>
>
>>Are you saying Lisp is just an ordinary programming language?
>> http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/02/ooh-ooh-my-turn-why-
>
> lisp.html
>
> Yeah. Lisp is probably the only language which is used more for meta-
> discussions about it than for actual coding. Uh, well, speaking of it...
> thanks for your "STFU and finally start writing code" video-rant. That's
> one of the more valuable advices I got in Lisp-land.
Thx! Yeah, when I am not over here devouring the newborn I am
programming away at Lisp heads down feeling sorry for the dweebs who
only talk about Lisp. It is a pleasure that never fades and only
increases with fluency.
Ah, the backup is done, gotta go...
kt
On Oct 20, 6:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> You read four books from cover to cover and not made sense of them?
>
> This points at a lack of material upstairs.
This says a lot about users of Commune Lisp.
William James wrote:
> On Oct 20, 6:25 pm, Kaz Kylheku <········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>You read four books from cover to cover and not made sense of them?
>>
>>This points at a lack of material upstairs.
>
>
> This says a lot about users of Commune Lisp.
This is what people criticized by users of Common Lisp always say.
hth, kt
P� Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:40:35 +0200, skrev cartercc <········@gmail.com>:
>
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
> Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
> that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
> particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
> suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
> Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
> processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
> Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
> So ... what good is it?
>
> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> would appreciate an honest answer.
>
> CC
Now is the time to look at the libaries available to Common Lisp. Don't
expect everything to be a part of the CL standard. Take alook at
www.cliki.net, common-lisp.net and www.weitz.de.
I have found libraries that satisfy all of the criteria above and more.
They are not distributed out of the box however, you will have to figure
it out for yourself. Learning what libaries are any good and how to use
them is quite a chore in itself.
Here is a liest of some of the libraries I use..
acl2-sources archive_0.5.0 asdf-install aspectl cffi-060831 chunga-0.4.3
cl+ssl cl-base64-3.3.2 cl-emb-0.4.3 cl-fad-0.6.2 cl-magick cl-pop
cl-ppcre-1.3.3 cl-prevalence cl-smtp cl-store_0.8 cl-unification
cl-utilities-1.2.4 cl-who-0.11.1 cl-xml cl-yacc-0.2 closer-mop_0.42
clsql-4.0.3 contextl cxml drakma-0.11.5 flexi-streams-1.0.3 gzip-stream
html-template-0.9.1 hunchentoot-0.15.7 iterate-1.4.3 md5-1.8.5 meta
puri-1.5.1 rfc2388 s-sysdeps s-xml salza-0.7.2 series-2.2.9 split-sequence
trivial-gray-streams-2006-09-16 uffi-1.6.0 url-rewrite-0.1.1 XMLisp zip
--------------
John Thingstad
cartercc wrote:
>> OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
>
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
> Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
> that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
> particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
> suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
> Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
> processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
> Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
If you are using these libraries, to match regular expressions, or to
design a GUI, or to generate HTML, then you are not programming, you are
just using libraries.
> So ... what good is it?
Lisp is good at meta-programming. So first you'd have to have a
programming problem to put lisp to a good use, and then you'd have a
programming problem hard or repeatitive enough to put lisp
meta-programming gears to good use.
For example, a good use of Lisp would be to make all the java
programmers unemployed, by writing a java programming system that would
produce java code automatically from specifications.
An example of a good enough use of Lisp, would be to help produce good
libraries for library users.
> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> would appreciate an honest answer.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com
On 21 okt, 00:40, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 20, 2:24 pm, Kenny <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Because it might be broken and one does not know it? The salient
> > question then being, *why* has the OP been looking at Lisp? As happy as
> > they are, they might be sensing A Better Way(tm) is possible. And it is.
>
> Why? Because people who have a reputation for knowing what they are
> talking about think that Lisp is worth using, people like Eric Raymond
> and Paul Graham. Simply that. I certainly lack the experience to
> personally validate their opinions, but I would like to acquire that
> experience.
>
> Plus the fact that it's fifty years old and still going strong, so
> there must be something to it on that basis alone.
>
> > > When you get right down to it, Lisp just is a programming language.
>
> > Only in the sense of being a superset thereof. And the super bit is what
> > the OP seems to be in search of.
>
> Lisp is simply a tool. My question was what kinds of problems is the
> tool suited for. Is this an unfair question to ask for someone who
> doesn't know?
>
>
>
> > OTOH, that "trying for three years" sounds wrong.
>
> It was three years ago that I bought a copy of 'ANSI Common Lisp.'
> Read through it but didn't have the background to make much sense of
> it. Two years ago, I bought a copy of the 'Little Lisper.' with a
> similar outcome. This year I bought 'Practical Common Lisp' with still
> a similar outcome. Then, I bought a copy of 'Common LISPcraft' and
> have worked through it. Now, I'm rereading Graham's book with a lot
> more success, but I'm to the point now of wondering if all this effort
> is worth it. I won't know until I am able to compare projects with
> Lisp vs. another language. I am moderately proficient in the three
> that I mentioned, and know enough to choose a tool better suited for a
> particular problem. If you would suggest that Lisp is particularly
> suited to X kinds of problems, it would give me an idea. Right now,
> Lisp doesn't seem to have the same kind of RE facility that I use in
> processing data files, it doesn't seem to have the GUI libraries that
> Java has, and doesn't seem to be embedded in HTML like ColdFusion.
> So ... what good is it?
>
> This isn't a slap in the face at Lisp, but an honest question, and I
> would appreciate an honest answer.
>
> CC
I am a Perl programmer too. The best way that I found out how to learn
Lisp, was to discover "How To Design Programs" and install MzScheme.
Not only did I learn Lisp, but I discovered also better ways to use
Perl.
Regards,
Jurgen
cartercc <········@gmail.com> writes:
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
>
> This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
> those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
> isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
> script that you have used for a job?
I haven't used Lisp in paying work, but I did just deploy a real project
in it (a new back-end for my person web site and blog) and found it
quite excellent for the task.
In my experience, Lisp particularly shines in contexts where iterative,
incremental development is desirable. It's also great for systems that
need to be extensible, although some discipline is required to keep
things from becoming a mess. This is true in any language, but Lisp
provides fewer tools for enforcing sanity. In exchange, though, it
provides many more tools for enabling sanity.
The interactive incremental and iterative development is huge -- I test
my web engine on my laptop in Lisp process controlled from Emacs via
SLIME. I can modify a function, tell Lisp to reload that function into
the already-running image, reload the page in my browser, and
immediately see the results without an expensive recompile or restart.
It's enabled me to be rather productive (and to have a lot of fun) in
developing the system. I know of no other system with this degree of
support for interactive development.
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
No, not in my experience or opinion. Of course, it does depend on your
definition of "useful". I've seen comments on this group indicating
that Lisp isn't the greatest thing for large (100s of people)
development team, but it is very useful for enabling one or a few
programmers. And they may very well get as much done as the 100 people
due to the increased enabling power of Lisp.
- Michael
--
mouse, n: A device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
Confused by the strange files? I cryptographically sign my messages.
For more information see <http://www.elehack.net/resources/gpg>.
From: Raffael Cavallaro
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <gdi6d8$c92$1@aioe.org>
On 2008-10-20 09:36:24 -0400, cartercc <········@gmail.com> said:
> Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
*Used* yes; *useful* no. java is much more used (i.e., popular) than
lisp (as is python, etc.) They are not more useful than lisp.
Popularity is a function of how easy it is to get your feet wet doing
simple tasks (php, python), and how much money has been poured into
marketing (Java, C#). Lisp is not the easiest language to become
proficient at and it hasn't had lots of money thrown at it since the
early 90s.
Don't confuse popularity with usefulness. The Ginsu knife is more
popular than the Henckels chef's knife. The Henckels is more useful.
On 20 out, 11:36, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
> wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
> when I have a better tool at hand.
Folks with a tool mentality are pragmatic folks wanting to get their
stuff done ASAP. They could employ whatever general-purpose language
for the job -- like Lisp, Python or Java -- but will no doubt prefer
the ones with vast amounts of libs, helper tools and userbase
available. Lisp is not for you, because its userbase and libs are
very small compared to C++, Java and so on.
Many people consider languages to mold thought and Lisp is one of the
most mindblowing in this respect. But pragmatic folks don't want a
mind-expanding language, they want a hammer to hit nails and, thus,
don't see the point.
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008oct21-001@yahoo.com>
> From: namekuseijin <············@gmail.com>
> Folks with a tool mentality are pragmatic folks wanting to get their
> stuff done ASAP. They could employ whatever general-purpose language
> for the job -- like Lisp, Python or Java -- but will no doubt prefer
> the ones with vast amounts of libs, helper tools and userbase
> available. Lisp is not for you, because its userbase and libs are
> very small compared to C++, Java and so on.
That could be fixed if enough members of the Lisp community got
together to fix it. What I have in mind is:
- One person who knows this info, write up simple instructions for
checking whether asdf is already installed on your system and if
not how to install it (at the system level if you have that
authorization, else at your personal user level if you're just
an ordinary user of an ISP with no authority to mess with system
installations). Then everyone who hasn't yet installed asdf (or
verified his/her ISP already has it installed), follow those
instructions to make sure it's available.
- Survey the public-posted libraries for Common Lisp to simply
create a master list of libraries that need to be categorized.
Post that master to-do list in a public place for all team
members to consult. (I'd be glad to host the to-do list myself if
others feed me the raw list of libraries they are aware of.)
- Each volunteer tackle a subset of that to-do list: For each
library, create a simple descriptor that tells what kind of data
it processes, what kind of service it provides, according to the
published description of that library. Collect all these
per-library descriptors into a database, perhaps as simple as a
set of Web pages per library with links from the entry in the
to-do list to the corresponding descriptor page. (I'd be glad to
build the Web site containing all these per-library descriptor
pages and set up the links from the to-do list.)
- Each volunteer browse the Web site to select libraries that seem
to be of interest to that person. Formally volunteer to do
further work on clarifying the capabilities of that particular
library. Set up a stub of Web page on your own Web site for the
library, wherein you'll build your information about that
library. Initially just include a preface showing your contact
info and the ID of the library that will be described here, so
that when you tell me your URL I can then verify the URL points
to the correct place. I'll flag the main record in the toplevel
to-do list to show who has volunteered to work on each library,
and I'll link from the main descriptor for that library to the
private Web page being set up. Whenever you believe you have
mostly completed your study of that library, let me know and
I'll look at your Web page myself and offer feedback on what
additional work needs to be done there. (Of course others may
offer feedback at any time.)
- As I start to see progress towards clearly defining what
intentional data-type is processed by each library, I'll suggest
a way to organize the various intentional data-types into a
hierarchy, and set up a preliminary hierarchy containing links
to all libraries that have been put into the hierarchy. I'll
flag each single-library descriptor to show whether it's been
classified yet and if so where it is in the hierarchy.
- As soon as a good number of libraries are classified in the
hierarchy, volunteers will then be able to browse the hierarchy
to find categories of special personal interest, pick one
category at a time, download and install each of the libraries
within that one catetory, and set up per-library evaluation
records and per-category comparisons accordingly, and notify the
maintainer of the descriptor (me) and the maintainer of the full
per-library description (somebody else) to install links from
there to the per-library critique.
- Eventually it'll be possible for somebody searching for a
particular kind of library to quickly find where it ought to be
located in the hierarchy, and then to determine whether anything
appropriate really is available there, and if so what quality of
library it is, and how specifically to use it. Thus for each
decently-working library there'd be an API specification,
equivalent in ease-of-use to the Java API (easier to understand
than the CLHS), plus a way to find it in the first place (easier
than *either* the Java API or the CLHS).
If I can find two volunteers (in addition to myself) who are
willing to do the initial work of harvesting info about a couple
major public Lisp libraries, and one of the volunteers can also
document the key asdf query/install info, we could start, and hope
others will join our effort as soon as we have shown some
respectable progress.
I'm hoping that if we make it easy for just about anyone to jump
into Lisp as easy as they jump into Java, immediately finding a
library for their particular task, quickly installing it and using
it, and becoming a "happy customer", that word will get around that
Lisp is just as easy to use as Java, and more employers will
**allow** their employees to use Lisp in addition to the
currently-more-popular languages, and after a while it'll actually
be possible to get a paying job writing Lisp software, initially
just using existing libraries with not much major on top of them,
and eventually getting paid to build new major libraries once "our
foot is in the door" of the employers.
On Oct 20, 6:36 am, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
> database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
> sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
> understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
> wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
> when I have a better tool at hand.
>
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
>
> This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
> those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
> isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
> script that you have used for a job?
>
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
don't forget the power of emacs lisp!
used in industry for practical purposes for over 2 decades. In the
1980s to perhaps early 1990s, it has a market share of perhaps 50% or
30% among professional programers. Today, i guess it's less than 1%.
will lisp ever have a market share of more than say 0.1%? I doubt it.
Even for pure tech geeking, is it in some sense most elegant or best
designed lang? Yeah, i bought that for like over a decade from lisp
forums and online faqs. Today, being a master of a few langs, and with
much more knowledge on social science and mathematics related to
computing, i consider that there's little, if ANY at all, sense, that
lisp could be reasonably considered beautiful or elegant. (any lisp;
Common Lisp, Scheme Lisp, Emacs Lisp ...)
The only reason that i like lisp (elisp), is that it is a high level
lang and a functional lang. Today, high level langs abound (perl,
python, php, ruby, javascript, to various degrees), and functional
langs abound too (haskell, OCaml, ... and to some degree, php is
practically a functional lang).
See:
• Fundamental Problems of Lisp, bottom: “Will Lisp ever be Popular?”
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lisp_problems.html
• Proliferation of Computing Languages
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/new_langs.html
if you want to get bread and butter, master one of the top 10 most
popular lang, e.g. C, Java, C++, perl, php, javascript, VisualBasic.
These, cover perhaps 99% of lang market share.
if you want to be able to look down on your fellow programers by being
fringe, yeah, there's lisp, but then there's also Mathematica,
Haskell, erlang, OCaml ...
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <rem-2008oct20-005@yahoo.com>
> From: cartercc <········@gmail.com>
> My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion.
I have demonstrations that Perl and Java can be used to implement
CGI applications. I'm not familiar with ColdFusion. Is it capable
of implementing CGI applications or not? If it is, please
demonstrate its capability by setting up a demo in a similar manner
to the demos I already have for 7 other languages (C C++ Perl Java
Lisp PHP FlamingThunder).
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html>
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html#step3>
> I understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for,
> and wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular
> job when I have a better tool at hand.
Lisp is a really good tool for a wider variety of kids of jobs than
the other languages. The only time I use some language other than
Lisp (except for my hello-plus demos) is when Lisp isn't allowed
(such as on some free Web hosting sites that support only Perl or
PHP) and in rare cases when some other language (usually Java) has
special libraries for the task readily available and well
documented, or where I just want a quick Web page with minimal
scripting where PHP is good enough. See here for that topic:
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html#s4outl> Skip to:
* Lesson 6: Briefly comparing the various programming languages
+ Why ever use another language except Lisp?
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job.
It's all fine and dandy that you can write superficial "scripts"
using PHP and Perl and Lisp, but that merely shows that all those
languages are roughly equivalent in ability to write three lines of
code to call up a library function to do a quick trick. To fully
appreciate Lisp you need to get past the idea of writing surface
scripts and start thinking of designing and implementing
data-processing algorithms that build and maintain and manipulate
tree structures as an essential part of each algorithm. The easy
stuff like sorted lists and associative arrays etc. have already
been provided in the libraries that comes with Java and Common
Lisp, so you need to think of something a little more advanced that
you could implement all by yourself. As a starter, try writing a
parser, i.e. a algorithm that converts some specialized syntax into
a tree structure representing the logical structure of the syntax.
(Don't try this on natural languages; it's too difficult to cover
all the cases in common use. Parse some contrived syntax used in
computer communications or data storage etc., such as RFC822
headers, or ELF or PE executables, or SGML/HTML, or JavaScript
within Web pages, etc.)
> All I ever see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI.
Either you're lying, or you have deliberately avoided reading this
newsgroup for the past twenty years. In either case you sound like
a "troll", just posting garbage for the purpose of starting fights.
> I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
Yes. I use it for just about every D/P task I want done, except if
it's a Web task and PHP will do it quick-and-dirty.
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for?
Just about everything. Take a look at <http://tinyurl.com/352wo4>
where you'll see a good proportion of tasks accomplished by means
of Lisp.
> Why is Lisp a better tool for those jobs than Perl or Java, or C
> or Basic for that matter?
Compared to C or Perl or Basic, it provides more options for
directly doing what you want instead of needing to find a way to
emulate what you want within the very limited set of operations
permitted by the language.
Compared to Java, it provides a way to directly do just want you
want without needing to first provide an entire framework of class
with methods. Java forces you to use OOP, and you must work hard to
fake any other paradigm. Lisp provides all the major paradigms
directly and independently and without hassle.
> And if it isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example
> of a short script that you have used for a job?
Script (in PowerLisp):
(input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output 67)
(Don't try this on natural languages; it's too difficult to cover
all the cases in common use. Parse some contrived syntax used in
computer communications or data storage etc., such as RFC822 headers,
or ELF or PE executables, or SGML/HTML, or JavaScript within Web pages,
etc.)
Output from that script:
***START***
(Don't try this on natural languages; it's too difficult to cover
all the cases in common use. Parse some contrived syntax used in
computer communications or data storage etc., such as RFC822
headers, or ELF or PE executables, or SGML/HTML, or JavaScript
within Web pages, etc.)
***END***
nil
Then I copy&paste from that back into this newsgroup article I'm
composing (near the top, 55-60 lines before here).
Are you sure you know the difference between a *script* (when you
just pass data into an already-programmed algorithm and collect the
results back out) and an *algorithm* (the inner workings used to
define a utility, such as the set of functions used to implement
input-find-second-line-indent-refill-output, which can then be
called from a script, but can also be called from a higher-level
utility)?
> dice.com ... Today, Java is at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at
> 2,157, and Lisp at 27.
If you can show me even one (1) Lisp programming job where Lisp
experience is the only experience needed, a job I might qualify for
with my 15 years Lisp programming experience, not a job that merely
mentions Lisp in addition to several other languages, where I
wouldn't qualify because I don't have five years J2EE it also
requires, I'd appreciate it. It's been more than ten years since I
saw a regular Lisp programming job opening advertised anywhere
closer than 3000 miles away.
For example, I tried dice.com just now:
<http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?caller=0&LOCATION_OPTION=2&EXTRA_STUFF=0&N=0&Hf=0&Ntk=JobSearchRanking&op=300&values=&FREE_TEXT=lisp&Ntx=mode+matchany&=0&=0&RADIUS=64.37376&ZC_COUNTRY=1525&COUNTRY=1525&STAT_PROV=1805&METRO_AREA=33.78715899%2C-84.39164034&AREA_CODES=&AC_COUNTRY=1525&TRAVEL=0&TAXTERM=0&SORTSPEC=0&FRMT=0&DAYSBACK=30&NUM_PER_PAGE=30>
number of mentions of Lisp down to 26 today, one less than when you
tried. The first three jobs in the local area are:
<http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&···············································@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=lisp&rating=99>
Skills:
Application Support Engineer - system support, data modeling, SQL,
Oracle, MS SQL Server, Linux, Unix, j2ee, Python, Lisp, XML, JSP,
HTML, DBA, Systems Administrator, Network Administrator
<http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&···············································@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=lisp&rating=99>
Skills:
Must be willing to relocate to Austria for a 2-year commitment. 2+
years of storage systems or SAN or NAS or CDP or data deduplication
software developing experience. ... You will
write C++ and Lisp code for a virtual machine that will work with SAN
and NAS systems.
<http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&···············································@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=lisp&rating=99>
Skills:
C++, software engineer, security, linux, platform, server, postgresql,
perl, swe, wireless ...
Desirable Skills
* Perl or other dynamic language like Ruby, JavaScript, Lisp or
Scheme
Each requires extensive non-Lisp experience ahead of anything Lisp.
From experience I've learned it's really a waste of my time to even
try looking for Lisp jobs on any of the online job boards, except
to prove a point such as here. I could spend every waking moment of
every day scanning job ads and see nothing I qualify for, only ads
that require experience I don't have and can't get in addition to
mentionning Lisp as a secondary requirement or as an afterthought.
But I'm interested in setting up a new kind of job-ad filtering
service that allows *rejecting* any job ads that require experience
the job-seeker doesn't have, so then I could run the filter
automatically and not be bothered until and unless some job opening
comes up that I *might* qualify for, not requiring any of the
skills I have already flagged as I_Don't_Have_That_Skill. It would
be run as a "cooperative", where volunteers spend time tagging the
job ads per skills (the more volunteers the fewer job ads that each
individual must tag), and then the voluneers can run the filter
based on the whole set of tags that everyone did. Some tagging
would be automatic, but humans would still be needed to specify new
keywords not previously known to trigger the appropriate tags, and
to correct mistakes made by the auto-tagging. Would anybody be
interested in joining me in such a cooperative effort?
On Oct 20, 4:44 pm, ·············@teh.intarweb.org (Robert Maas,
http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
> CGI applications. I'm not familiar with ColdFusion. Is it capable
> of implementing CGI applications or not? If it is, please
ColdFusion is embedded in HTML like PHP. It's now an Adobe product
that will be bundled with Flash, ActionScript, Adobe's graphics
products like PhotoShop, etc., in direct competition with
Microsoft .NET, ASP, Silverlight, etc.
> demonstrate its capability by setting up a demo in a similar manner
> to the demos I already have for 7 other languages (C C++ Perl Java
> Lisp PHP FlamingThunder).
> <http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html>
> <http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/hellos.html#step3>
Thanks, I'll look at these in a bit.
> It's all fine and dandy that you can write superficial "scripts"
> using PHP and Perl and Lisp, but that merely shows that all those
> languages are roughly equivalent in ability to write three lines of
> code to call up a library function to do a quick trick. To fully
> appreciate Lisp you need to get past the idea of writing surface
> scripts and start thinking of designing and implementing
> data-processing algorithms that build and maintain and manipulate
> tree structures as an essential part of each algorithm. The easy
> stuff like sorted lists and associative arrays etc. have already
> been provided in the libraries that comes with Java and Common
> Lisp, so you need to think of something a little more advanced that
> you could implement all by yourself. As a starter, try writing a
> parser, i.e. a algorithm that converts some specialized syntax into
> a tree structure representing the logical structure of the syntax.
> (Don't try this on natural languages; it's too difficult to cover
> all the cases in common use. Parse some contrived syntax used in
> computer communications or data storage etc., such as RFC822
> headers, or ELF or PE executables, or SGML/HTML, or JavaScript
> within Web pages, etc.)
Okay. I use Perl's RE's every day, and with your encouragement, I'll
attempt the same thing with Lisp and see what the difference is.
> > All I ever see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI.
>
> Either you're lying, or you have deliberately avoided reading this
> newsgroup for the past twenty years.
I've started reading c.l.l ever since by post about compiling a Lisp
script to an executable, about a month ago, so I guess you could say
that I have 'deliberately avoid reading this newsgroup for the past
twenty years.' Is that a crime? Do you shoot or hang new readers of
c.l.l?
> In either case you sound like
> a "troll", just posting garbage for the purpose of starting fights.
If that's your perception, so be it. Do you even know what a troll is?
I don't want to start a fight, but seems to me that you want to slam
the door shut on the heathen masses who aren't privy to the Holy of
Holies.
> Script (in PowerLisp):
Thank you.
> If you can show me even one (1) Lisp programming job where Lisp
> experience is the only experience needed, a job I might qualify for
> with my 15 years Lisp programming experience, not a job that merely
> mentions Lisp in addition to several other languages, where I
> wouldn't qualify because I don't have five years J2EE it also
> requires, I'd appreciate it. It's been more than ten years since I
> saw a regular Lisp programming job opening advertised anywhere
> closer than 3000 miles away.
I indicated that I was aware of the shortcomings of the sample. The
ONLY thing that it is evidence of is that 'Java' and 'Perl' show up a
lot more often in advertised jobs than 'Lisp.'
> But I'm interested in setting up a new kind of job-ad filtering
> service that allows *rejecting* any job ads that require experience
> the job-seeker doesn't have, so then I could run the filter
> automatically and not be bothered until and unless some job opening
> comes up that I *might* qualify for, not requiring any of the
> skills I have already flagged as I_Don't_Have_That_Skill.
It's been my experience that these job descriptions are the product of
HR types trying to do their jobs with as little effort as possible
rather than IT types trying to get people who can actually do the job.
Interviews with the HR dept are totally different than interviews with
the hiring supervisor, who is a lot more interested in what you can do
than in the credentials you possess. Two (very short) stories:
I interviewed for a programming position with the HR guy, who insisted
that the position was for a Ctt position, even when I showed him that
the requisition was for C++, and it was only after I insisted that he
verify it that he (very sheepishly) admitted that it was C++ after
all.
I also interviewed for a sys admin position with the HR guy, who had
no idea was BSD was. I cut my teeth on FreeBSD and even now FreeBSD
has a special place in my heart -- but he thought I was talking about
working with a Boy Scout troop!
CC
From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
Subject: Re: What is Lisp used for?
Date:
Message-ID: <REM-2008nov05-004@Yahoo.Com>
> From: cartercc <········@gmail.com>
> ColdFusion is embedded in HTML like PHP.
OK, so that got me doing a Google search:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion#Technical_commentary>
ColdFusion is not a general purpose programming
language. It cannot be used to create certain kinds of programs or
software. For example, ColdFusion was written in Java and it would
be impossible to write ColdFusion in ColdFusion itself (a
technique known as Bootstrapping).
That's bad.
Adobe ColdFusion is expensive compared to some of its
competitors, which are almost always free. Even Microsoft-based
solutions such as ASP.NET are technically free if you own a PC or
server running some version of Windows.
That kills it as anything I would ever use, unless my Unix shell
ISP happens to spend the money to install it. I'm not going to be
the one who asks them to please install it so that I can play with
it. Do **you** happen to be a customer of ColdFusion, somebody who
has paid for a license to use ColdFusion for your own commercial
use? Or is it too expensive for you too?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language>
ColdFusion Markup Language, more commonly known as CFML, is the
scripting language used by Adobe ColdFusion, BlueDragon and Railo, as
well as other CFML server engines.
->
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion#Alternative_server_environments>
ColdFusion originated as proprietary technology based on Web
technology industry standards. However, it is becoming a less closed
technology through the availability of competing products. Products
include Railo, BlueDragon, IgniteFusion, SmithProject and Coral Web
Builder.
The argument can be made that ColdFusion is even less platform-bound
than raw J2EE or .NET, simply because ColdFusion will run on top of a
.NET app server (New Atlanta), or on top of any servlet container or
J2EE application server (JRun, WebSphere, JBoss, Geronimo, Tomcat,
Resin Server, Jetty (web server), etc.). In theory, a ColdFusion
application could be moved unchanged from a J2EE application server to
a .NET application server.
So actually CFML is what I would be interested, not AdobeCF itself.
Now I just need to find a free add-on to the Apache server that my
Unix shell ISP could easily install.
ColdFusion tags have the same format as HTML tags. They are enclosed
in angle brackets (< and >) and can have zero or more named
attributes. Many ColdFusion tags have bodies; that is, they have
beginning and end tags with text to be processed between them. For
example:
<cfoutput>
#value# Bob!
</cfoutput>
So the syntax is a mix of SGML/XML to identify and bound bodies,
and something else actually within the bodies.
<http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/functions_a-b_21.html>
Function syntax
ArraySort(array, sort_type [, sort_order ])
Well that's essentially Algol/C syntax there. It's quite apparent
that a lot of the syntax is missing from that WikiPedia article,
nevermind the semantics!
> It's now an Adobe product that will be bundled with Flash,
> ActionScript, Adobe's graphics products like PhotoShop, etc.,
Nobody around here can afford Adobe PhotoShop. Can you afford it?
OT: Do you know any free product for MS-Windows-XP that allows
generating a lossy-compressed JPEG? I have a whole bunch of images
that are shrunk in physical size to fit cellphone screen, but lots
of them still take up too much bandwidth to download, often over
10k bytes:
<http://www.geocities.com/cuddledarling7/ImagesL/R8SLBLHMBFCH-L2a.jpg>
<http://www.geocities.com/cuddledarling7/ImagesM/AQSQOZBTJCSB-M37b.jpg>
<http://www.geocities.com/cuddledarling7/ImagesMS2/M45-Nat50E1.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/cuddledarling7/ImagesMS2/M45-Nat50E2.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images/cactus2E.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images/volcano2E.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/AustraliaMap-E1.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/FrankSinatraE.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/PortlandOregonDowntownE.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/PicassoSelfport1907E.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/FrankSinatraE.JPG>
<http://www.geocities.com/onecloudmoving1/Images4/SingaporeLocateEJ.JPG>
in some cases over 20k bytes:
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/Pixs/Pix2008/jaspgoat.jpg>
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/Pixs/Pix2008/GooEar-Galaxy.jpg>
but I'd like to lossy-compress *every* one of them, as well as the
innumerable set between 5-10k bytes, to at most 5k bytes each.
(Mobile InterNet costs $5 per 5 megabytes, i.e. $1 per megabyte,
i.e. one cent per 10k bytes, i.e. half cent per 5k bytes. I
consider half-cent per image to be totally affordable, but more
than one cent per image to be a bit expensive when part of a major
application that uses hundreds or thousands of such images per cellphone
per day.)
> I use Perl's RE's every day, and with your encouragement, I'll
> attempt the same thing with Lisp and see what the difference is.
AFAIK regular expresssions aren't a part of the Common Lisp
standard, although some vendors may have added such facility to
their particular implementations. But IMO regular expressions are a
crappy way to express patterns to match. First of all, the syntax
is inhumane. There are a whole bunch of characters that have
special meanings in some contexts but not in other contexts even
within a single regular expression. If you want to search just for
a single exact string that is all alphanumeric, then the regex is
trivial, but then you don't need a regex in the first place, an
ordinary search string would work just as well. As soon as you
start using the features of regular expresssions that go beyond
single-string exact-match, you must use those special characters,
and as soon as you search for any non-alphanumeric character you
must watch out for your particular character being one of those
special characters with special meaning sometimes but not always.
In a context where those characters normally have special meaning,
you must explicitly quote them to get them to match themselves
verbatim. In a context where those characters are treated as
themselves verbatim already, you absolutely must *not* try to quote
them because then the quoting character would be taken verbatim too
which would ruin your pattern. The other problem is that a regex
merely matches a given string, producing either a true/false
result, or an index-into-string, or an array of
indexes-into-string. There's no way to find a structured expression
within the string and pull out that structure. Much better than
regular expressions would be a nice clean syntax such as
s-expresssions that express a true structure of pattern matching
without all those special characters, and where by the clearly
structured pattern inherently provides a way to pull out the parts
of a large structure.
So if you are already used to the geeky notation used by regular
expressions, and you have available an implementation of Common
Lisp that provides regex capability, then go ahead and try them and
report how well they work. But I recommend you also consider a more
structured and less geeky-inscrutable way of expressing patterns.
Even BNF is more structured and clean than regex. But a few years
ago I partly developed a Lisp way of expressing a pattern,
externally as an s-expression, internally as a nested list.
> > > All I ever see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI.
> > Either you're lying, or you have deliberately avoided reading this
> > newsgroup for the past twenty years.
> I've started reading c.l.l ever since by post about compiling a Lisp
> script to an executable, about a month ago, so I guess you could say
> that I have 'deliberately avoid reading this newsgroup for the past
> twenty years.' Is that a crime? Do you shoot or hang new readers of
> c.l.l?
No, but I think it is your obligation to tell us *where* you saw
people saying that Lisp is good for AI as a centi-truth that fails
to tell the other 99% of what Lisp is good for. Surely if you had
honestly been reading this newsgroup you would haven't seen that
here except from other newbies (such as you) who are merely quoting
from other sources (of centi-truths), and if you had been watching
followups you would have seen massive rebuttal, and then you would
have known not to quote that centi-truth, and in particular it
would have been a complete lie for you to say that's *all* you've
seen (regarding this issue). I really don't believe you've been
reading CLL for a full month, at least not in a thorough way,
because if you had then you would have seen mention of lots of uses
for Lisp other than A.I.
> The ONLY thing that it is evidence of is that 'Java' and 'Perl'
> show up a lot more often in advertised jobs than 'Lisp.'
Well that part is correct. Unfortunately none of those jobs for
Java programming are really just plain Java programming. They are
all (as far as I've seen) really jobs doing JBoss and WebSphere
rather than Java per se. If you happen to see a job that is really
a Java or Lisp programming job, where experience/competance with
Java or Lisp programming really is the only major qualification,
please let me know.
I think the full truth of these ads that mention 'Java' is that
Java more than Lisp has been used in commercial application
frameworks that are used by lots of companies who then need people
experienced in these specific application frameworks and are
unwilling to train Java programmers to use these application
frameworks, or even allow Java programmers to teach themselves by
hands-on playing with the application framework.
I'm so desperate for paid work that I'm almost on the verge of
turning dishonest, by studying some online tutorial about those
application frameworks, memorizing all the buzz words etc., never
having hands-on experience because I have no access to any of those
application frameworks, but lying on my resume and on applications
for the jobs to falsely claim that I have several years experience
with them, then bluffing my way through an interview using that
memorized jargon, then if I get hired using all my time on the job
to actually get hands-on experence playing with those application
frameworks using the same tutorials I had studied before where I
skipped all the do-it-yourself exercises but can now finally do
them. I wouldn't get any actual work done, and would get fired, but
then I'd have that hands-on experience playing with the application
frameworks, so it'd be easier to bluff my way through successive
interviews, and after getting hired and fired several times I'd
finally have enough hands-on experience to actually do the work and
hold the job.
> > But I'm interested in setting up a new kind of job-ad filtering
> > service that allows *rejecting* any job ads that require experience
> > the job-seeker doesn't have, so then I could run the filter
> > automatically and not be bothered until and unless some job opening
> > comes up that I *might* qualify for, not requiring any of the
> > skills I have already flagged as I_Don't_Have_That_Skill.
> It's been my experience that these job descriptions are the
> product of HR types trying to do their jobs with as little effort
> as possible rather than IT types trying to get people who can
> actually do the job.
I agree. The main purpose of my filter would be to skip the vast
majority of the jobs that are fluffed with impossile job
requirements, and then I can concentrate my time on those extremely
rare job ads written by IT managers who know what they *really*
need. Then I'd be doing useful work for those very rare honest
managers/jobAdvertisers, and they'd benefit at the expense of the
fluffers. If lots of job seekers use my filtering system, then our
working for the honest managers/jobAdvertisers and not ever
applying for the fluff job ads might eventually have an economic
effect againt the fluffers, to where they either "get a clue" and
stop fluffing (and consequently start getting seen by users of my
system, and hire some of us), or go out of business.
> Interviews with the HR dept are totally different than interviews with
> the hiring supervisor, who is a lot more interested in what you can do
> than in the credentials you possess.
The last time I was able to get even one such interview was in
1994. (I got a total of five from 1991 to 1994, one of which
resulted in a 2.5 week job in 1992, cut short because the
one-person start-up company had no more money to pay me.)
> I interviewed for a programming position with the HR guy, who
> insisted that the position was for a Ctt position, even when I
> showed him that the requisition was for C++, and it was only after
> I insisted that he verify it that he (very sheepishly) admitted
> that it was C++ after all.
How did you ever get the interview in the first place, unless you
lied by saying that you had several years Ctt experience?
> I also interviewed for a sys admin position with the HR guy, who
> had no idea was BSD was. I cut my teeth on FreeBSD and even now
> FreeBSD has a special place in my heart -- but he thought I was
> talking about working with a Boy Scout troop!
Do you have complete text of those two job ads? If so, would you
please show them to me, and also indicate which items in the
required experience/expertise section you had and which you didn't
have? I'm just curious how you managed to get two interviews during
a time I got none at all. (I'm assuming you got these interviews
more recently than 1994.)
On 2008-11-05, Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t
<·············@teh.intarweb.org> wrote:
>> From: cartercc <········@gmail.com>
>> ColdFusion is embedded in HTML like PHP.
>
> OK, so that got me doing a Google search:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion#Technical_commentary>
> ColdFusion is not a general purpose programming
> language. It cannot be used to create certain kinds of programs or
> software. For example, ColdFusion was written in Java and it would
> be impossible to write ColdFusion in ColdFusion itself (a
> technique known as Bootstrapping).
> That's bad.
What's bad is the obsession with implementing language X in language X.
> OT: Do you know any free product for MS-Windows-XP that allows
> generating a lossy-compressed JPEG?
GIMP, for one, runs on Windows. It's save dialog lets you dial in a desired
copmression level, with the possibility of a real-time preview in the image
edit window so you can visually check the quality.
c> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
c> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
c> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
c> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
are you looking for a Lisp success stories? there are lots of them.
http://www.google.com/search?q=lisp+success+stories
i guess that largest company that actively uses Common Lisp now
is ITA software -- lisp is at core of their airplane ticket reservation
system.
franz.com has success stories arranged by categories, so you can see
it is used wide variety of areas.
a famous quote by Kent Pitman:
...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI,
Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor
applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge
Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language,
Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web
Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list.
On 20 out, 17:01, "Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net>
wrote:
> a famous quote by Kent Pitman:
>
> ...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI,
> Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor
> applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge
> Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language,
> Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web
> Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list.
Hah, well remembered. A very memorable quote... :)
On Oct 20, 8:36 am, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
> database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
> sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
> understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
> wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
> when I have a better tool at hand.
>
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
>
> This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
> those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
> isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
> script that you have used for a job?
>
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
>
> Thanks, CC.
CC. I think it's great you're interested in Lisp. I'm not sure the
reason lisp hasn't been adopted more readily (I think there are
probably multiple reasons): but here are some possible explanations.
1.) It a hard language to learn if you know other programming
languages: I think if it was the first language you learned it would
be easier to learn than C and harder than BASIC. Probably the best
thing to do when learning lisp is to forget all the other language you
know as best you can, as their knowledge is likely to confuse what you
expect of Common Lisp. (With the possible exception of things like
Scheme, Haskell, Prolog, and other functional and/or declarative
languages).
2.) Superstition and inertia: For example, there is a lot of signal
processing functionality in Matlab, largely because electrical
engineers have fallen madly in love with that terrible language, but
nothing would stop a person from writing good signal processing code
in lisp, if an API for it existed... but then, you couldn't use any of
the code from current signal processing research (because it would be
in matlab!) and no one would use your code or take advantage of your
research (because everyone else in your field would only know
matlab!). I think similar sorts of problems happen in IT as well.
I'm a graduate student in areas related to signal processing and AI so
I can't really provide you with a counter example to the cliche that
Lisp is only good for AI, but knowing the language I don't really
believe that to be its only application: it is very general purpose
(i.e. flexible!).
Please don't listen to all the people on this list who are telling you
to stop trying to learn lisp! How rude! Kudos to you for still having
the curiosity and initiative to keep learning new things! I hope I'm
the same way when I'm 58. I strongly recommend Paul Grahm's ANSI
Common Lisp. I think it is well worth your effort to read that one
carefully. (I think "Practical Common Lisp" is actually better read
after that one).
On Oct 20, 6:36 pm, cartercc <········@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a full time IT employee who's main responsibilities include
> database stuff, file manipulation, and building web interfaces to data
> sources. My main languages are Perl, Java, and ColdFusion. I
> understand exactly what kinds of jobs the tools are good for, and
> wouldn't try to use a tool that is less suited for a particular job
> when I have a better tool at hand.
>
> I have been trying to learn Lisp for several years now and have
> reached the stage where I am building some non-trivial scripts, but
> these are just 'toy' scripts that I can't use on the job. All I ever
> see is the suggestion that Lisp is good for AI. This isn't right, is
> it? I'm not interested is theory, but in actual, real world practice.
> Is Lisp a suitable tool to use for workaday solutions?
>
> This question to those of you who are journeyman Lisp practitioners:
> What kinds of jobs do you use Lisp for? Why is Lisp a better tool for
> those jobs than Perl or Java, or C or Basic for that matter? And if it
> isn't too much of a faux pas, could you post an example of a short
> script that you have used for a job?
>
> I am a weekly browser of sites like dice.com, and sometimes I put in
> the names of languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, PHP) just
> to see how many advertised positions use these terms. Today, Java is
> at 13,767, Perl at 4,690, PHP at 2,157, and Lisp at 27. I know this is
> not a scientific survey, but it suggests that there isn't a big demand
> for Lisp programmers. Is Java really that much more useful than Lisp?
>
> Thanks, CC.
I were in your position 2 years back. So I decided to create a Lisp
that will be *useful* for most real-world programming tasks. Take a
look at http://spark-scheme.wikispot.org/. This is my personal
project, but I am looking for contributors, especially to maintain the
Windows port. If you like what you see, please try to help me, either
by contributing code or testing the libraries.
Thank you,
-- Vijay
Vijay Mathew <·················@gmail.com> writes:
> [...]
> I were in your position 2 years back. So I decided to create a Lisp
> that will be *useful* for most real-world programming tasks. Take a
> look at http://spark-scheme.wikispot.org/. This is my personal
> project, but I am looking for contributors, especially to maintain the
> Windows port. If you like what you see, please try to help me, either
> by contributing code or testing the libraries.
What do you feel are the key advantages of Spark over other dialects
such as Clojure or Arc ? I realize creating new dialects is part of
the culture, I'm just curious about any particular advantages.
> Thank you,
>
> -- Vijay
--
Brian Adkins
http://www.lojic.com/
http://lojic.com/blog/
Spark is not a new dialect. It is plain Scheme with a few syntax
extensions. It makes use of the MzScheme virtual machine. Its main
advantage is it's rich collection of libraries. The interfaces are
designed in such a way that people coming from other dynamic languages
like Python and Ruby will not find themselves crippled. I think the
Scheme language backed by a set of libraries designed to solve real-
world problems is a hackers dream come true! (well, at least for me!).
Please look at the Spark documentation and sample programs to get a
feel of what you accomplish with it.
-- Vijay
On Nov 7, 9:24 am, Brian Adkins <···········@gmail.com> wrote:
> Vijay Mathew <·················@gmail.com> writes:
> > [...]
> > I were in your position 2 years back. So I decided to create a Lisp
> > that will be *useful* for most real-world programming tasks. Take a
> > look athttp://spark-scheme.wikispot.org/. This is my personal
> > project, but I am looking for contributors, especially to maintain the
> > Windows port. If you like what you see, please try to help me, either
> > by contributing code or testing the libraries.
>
> What do you feel are the key advantages of Spark over other dialects
> such as Clojure or Arc ? I realize creating new dialects is part of
> the culture, I'm just curious about any particular advantages.
>
> > Thank you,
>
> > -- Vijay
>
> --
> Brian Adkinshttp://www.lojic.com/http://lojic.com/blog/