Reddit Guys on the Pros and Cons of Lisp

From
http://www.davidnewberger.com/wp/2005/11/28/if-you-havent-reddit-you-are-missing-out/

as seen on Planet Lisp:

"In the pros department: it?s a great programming language. Ruby,
python, perl, java can?t really compete as languages. HTML and
symbolic expressions are almost a one-to-one mapping, so generating
HTML is a breeze. It?s great fun to work in, and I?ve certainly
learned a good deal about programming in general just for using it.

"Having a Lisp process I can manipulate on a live server has been very
handy for updating small changes and debugging as well.

"The drawbacks all basically stem from the same problem. Since very
few people actually use Lisp, we can?t take advantage of the
tremendous community support the other languages have. There are few
libraries, few implementations, and little real-world examples of
building large-scale websites in Lisp. The language itself (ANSI
Common Lisp) hasn?t changed much since it was standardized, which was
about 20 years ago.

"I don?t regret writing reddit in Lisp at all. It?s a particularly
good language for developing applications without a solid plan of
where you?re going. Lisp never gets in the programmer?s way. However,
sometimes (oftentimes, more like it) the environment does (again, lack
of a strong community). We may rewrite reddit in something else as we
bring on more programmers, but Lisp has certainly served as well up
until this point."

I suspect the drawbacks have a lot to do with scaring bigger
organizations away from Lisp.
--
adamnospamaustin.rr.com
s/nospam/c\./
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Computer Algebra Algorithms
    ... If you want to learn CAS, learn lisp because that is what the ... The parser could be written in C or any other language. ... I would consider that such a minor aspect of a programming ... generally prefer righting there numeric algorithms in Maple and MATLAB ...
    (sci.math.symbolic)
  • Why should I care about Lisp and Scheme?
    ... Foreword to the book "Essentials of Programming Languages". ... It's an imaginary conversation between a newbie and a hacker. ... Why should I care about Lisp and Scheme? ... language, the result would be a Lisp interpreter. ...
    (comp.lang.scheme)
  • Re: F#
    ... Why did they take Lisp? ... properties of the language are only a part of the picture. ... If the favored programming style of a certain language ... Knowing a success story only tells me that other people ...
    (comp.lang.functional)
  • [ANN] 2nd European Lisp & Scheme Workshop
    ... Pascal Costanza, Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel ... Lisp has a tradition of providing a fruitful basis for language design ... and suggestions for breakout groups that discuss the opportunities Lisp ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Opinions on intro lisp books
    ... But Lisp is a little different, ... Some languages support one style of programming better than they ... Even if that weren't the case, I'm not sure that a language being a ... I don't believe that learning to program in CL requires more theory ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)