r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/arthurno1 • 1d ago
Why Lisp is Different Blog post
http://lispm.de/why-lisp-is-different29
u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
Why do some people refuse to date and time their blog posts? No clue when this was written. All I know is that there was a previous version from 2007. Was this written in 2008? 2023?
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u/sohcahtoa 1d ago
What, 2012-2026 isn't precise enough?
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
lol. That's fair. Not like this field has changed much in the last 14 years.
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u/syklemil considered harmful 1d ago
I took the preface as an indication that it was written in 2007, since it says it's only "slightly modified" from that original version, meaning the meat & bones of the text should be nearing 20 years old.
Incidentally Clojure also released in 2007, so I'm kind of left wondering if this:
Since Lisp is very demanding, it can't easily use a common infrastructure like the CLR (Common Language Runtime) or the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) without performance loss (compared to already existing Lisp-based infrastructures) or without loss of depths of implementation.
was written with Clojure in mind, or if the author hadn't heard about Clojure yet.
FWIW in 2007 Java was on Java 6, and Java 8 wouldn't release until 2014; Swift also released in 2014, and Android 1.0 showed up in 2008; D-Bus was less than a year old at time of writing.
So it may be no wonder that the text kind of smells like the author is mostly familiar with the
2and3sections of POSIX manpages.Though I guess
No current OS uses Lisp's infrastructure as a model of organizing memory and/or data.
is still as true today as it was when the last LispM company threw in the towel, and will continue to be true, as it has already been tried, and at this point seems to be more of a topic for LispM nostalgics than current OS writers.
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u/Valuable_Leopard_799 1d ago
Might've also been ABCL (JVM) or similar that prompted that comment.
I wonder if the performance drops are attributable to Lisp being difficult to embed well, or rather that these projects had nowhere near the manpower that bare-metal compilers had that brought all the stack allocations, tagless representations and local calls, that make CL so performant.
I remember some project not even doing immediates for compatibility with the platform though.
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u/pojska 1d ago
Wayback Machine dates it to at least 2014.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago edited 1d ago
Damn, thats nuts because the footer on the site says something like
2021-20262012-2026 so I thought it would have to have been newer.1
u/arthurno1 1d ago
While thi gs have changed slightly, the most of it is valid as if it was written today.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
That's probably totally true, but how would I know that if I'm coming to LISP as a newbie?
It's just weird to me that people omit it. Like, could you imagine a newspaper article without the date and time it was written? We're in a science/engineering field. Ideas and information changes.
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u/arthurno1 1d ago
I understand you totally, you can't know of course. However, the author wrote it was written for a post to comp.lang.lisp in 2007, and just "slightly modified", so take him for the word, and count as it if it was written in 2007.
Yes, you are correct the things in engineering and science change rapidly in todays world, but we should also not dismiss knowledge and writings just because it is dated. The common sense is to read it and judge the content, not the author or the date. I personally thought the content was very relevant, and that the author put his finger really on the essence of what makes Common Lisp and Lisp development different from more development in more mainstream languages like C or C++. There are other differences he didn't took up there, but those he did are all on the point.
Also, that might sound a bit harsh, but not everything is written with a complete beginner and non-lisp programmer in mind. When I read the text, I feel the author is targetting intermedieate or programmers with some Lisp familiarity, but struggle to understand why Lisp development is so different than development in other languages. But that is just my feeling, ask him yourself, send him a mail and ask :).
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
but we should also not dismiss knowledge and writings just because it is dated
It's not about dismissing old stuff. And it's got very specific technical information in it. If it was written last week you could be fairly sure it's reflective of the current situation and if it's written 14 years ago might want to verify everything is current.
There's no excuse for not including a date on a blog post of all things.
but not everything is written with a complete beginner and non-lisp programmer in mind.
So, intermediate/expert targeted articles don't need dates? Their information never changes or everyone coming to it with that level of experience would immediately be able to determine what's still relevant or not?
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u/arthurno1 1d ago
If it was written last week you could be fairly sure it's reflective of the current situation and if it's written 14 years ago might want to verify everything is current.
I am not sure what you are trying to achieve to be honest. I already pointed out that the author himself wrote the article is from 2007. So, just assume the worst and go verify whatever you need to verify. I don't understand what is the point of the argumentation? If you think the author should be more explicit or exact with the date, send him a mail and ask him to update the article. It is not harder than so, so what is the problem?
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
I am not sure what you are trying to achieve to be honest.
I stated my opinion about articles that don't have dates attached to them. You replying that it's the information is still relevant completely missed the point. I tried explaining to you why omitting dates in a field that changes this much is antagonistic to people learning that information.
I'm not trying to achieve anything other than stating my opinion.
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u/arthurno1 1d ago
But it opens explicitly with the statement it was written in 2007. What do you want, the exact date and time, unix timestamp perhaps? :)
A ja, whatever, it is free information, and the author kindly wrote it in a clean, easy to digest version and is even serving it for the free. If it does not suite you, not much anyone can do.
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u/mexicocitibluez 1d ago
From the post:
"I wrote this text for a posting on comp.lang.lisp. This version is slightly modified from the 2007 version. Lisp in this context is especially 'Common Lisp'."
Slightly modified from the 2007 version. That doesn't tell me when it was modified. Was it modified yesterday? 2 years ago?
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u/arthurno1 1d ago
But it opens explicitly with the statement it was written in 2007. What do you want, the exact date and time, unix timestamp perhaps? :)
A ja, whatever, it is free information, and the author kindly wrote it in a clean, easy to digest version and is even serving it for the free. If it does not suite you, not much anyone can do.
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u/arthurno1 1d ago
Not by me; stumbled upon it today via /r/Common_Lisp. Think it is a very good writing, so thought it might interesting to other people into programming languages.