Re: Reddit Guys on the Pros and Cons of Lisp

The lack of libraries argument is vaguely bogus. What libraries in
particular do they need that aren't already available? There exist
Common Lisp libraries for the most common application areas (database
interfaces, networking, bioinformatics, web servers, XML processing,
etc. plus a few neat libraries that most other languages couldn't even
think about having (CL-WHO, UCW, iterate)). For sure there aren't as
many libraries for Common Lisp as there are for, say, Perl, but take
advantage of interactive development and write them yourself.

Seriously, though, what are all of these great libraries that Lispers
are missing out on?

Bill

Adam Connor wrote:
> 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: Program compression
    ... problems to be solved much more concisely than with Lisp. ... In Common Lisp, it's another one line of code: ... My point is that different languages are based on different things ... it would be impossible for the author of a macro (in the Lisp ...
    (comp.programming)
  • Re: Better is better: improving productivity through programming
    ... Nothing in Common Lisp prevents us from doing that. ... some other popular languages takes a *lot* of work. ... The idea of using a language with better abstraction facility doesn't ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: To the Challenge question and a quick application from a J2EE guy
    ... There are some things that could easily be done better in lisp, ... java works through accessors and mutators, ... Thare are languages that better for this, ... And it has a large set of libraries that are established by default which isnt a bad thing at all, except it has not much to do with the language and syntax. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Making Lisp popular - can it be done?
    ... I'm really new to Lisp. ... There are not enough libraries in Lisp. ... Most people don't see the advantages of Lisp over their programming ... to allow for other languages to use libraries written in Lisp. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Making Lisp popular - can it be done?
    ... Languages designed by self-proclaimed "language design architects" ... Newcomer supply exists and existing users tend to stick with Lisp. ... existing libraries are not standard. ... to allow for other languages to use libraries written in Lisp. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)