Great story. Unfortunately, the API documentation and tutorial writing guilds went extinct decades ago and has never been able to return to Lispland. :)
I love lisp. I use/used it to build my web service product[1] and anything else I can.<p>=how do I do X?=<p>java: something similar to X is already done in Y. add abstract class and redo X and write Y. +200 LOC<p>lisp: something similar to X is already done in Y. realize you can generalize X and Y into a new pattern and use it for ABC too. -70 LOC<p>=there is a bug in function X=<p>java: open X.java. edit line. restart program. X seems to be working correctly.<p>lisp: two hours later, ah ha! I understand this code. fix X. write unit test. eval unit test. X works correctly.<p>[1] demo: <a href="https://a.keeptherecords.com/demo" rel="nofollow">https://a.keeptherecords.com/demo</a>, source: <a href="https://github.com/ThomasHintz/keep-the-records" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ThomasHintz/keep-the-records</a>
With the deepest reverence to John McCarthy, I regret to say that Lisp is our cosmological constant. It creates a static universe that is otherwise expanding; it reduces the problem to a solvable one and then declares victory. The truth is, it's all state. All of it.<p>Remember that movie "Boy in the Plastic Bubble," about a boy with an immune system deficiency who lives instead a hermetically-sealed, sterile bubble? That's not the answer. We instead need to create immune systems (read: robust systems) rather than simply avoiding them.<p>[I know I'm simplifying things, and this is not meant to be a slight.]
I had Haskell as the subject in my intro course at university (my first experience with functional programming). I've tinkered a bit with it since then as well, and I'm at the "somewhat intuitive grasp of monad transformers" state.<p>I tried Clojure some week ago through the Clojure koans that were posted here. Compared to Haskell I found the syntax very obtuse and it was not obvious why Lisp would be more powerful than Haskell. The bare-bones syntax felt more like a "proof of concept" than an actual strength.<p>(of course, the koans took less than a day to do so I'm not dismissing Clojure because they didn't impress me, but I got the idea that the koans were an attempt to showcase Clojure's strengths)
I am a intermediate programmer with just over one year experience.<p>Everywhere I read about the power of lisp and really want to use it. If it is so good why ain't it is used more?<p>It is very easy to get sites running using ASP .NET, wordpress, RoR or Django. I have worked on production sites using the first two. And personally tried on small projects on the last two.<p>Is there a way to use Lisp professionally?
I fail to see how this is going to convince anybody who hasn't tried lisp to give it a shot. This cartoon can be summarised as "All languages are accumulating bugs while lisp has some magic X and Y that provide a way around them."<p>A blub user will think "yeah whatever", IMHO.
Superb. I went on to read the sample chapter, which was equally amusing and interesting. I think I'm going to order the book, despite the fact I can't really think of any practical applications for Lisp in my day job - although who knows.
Most of the time, you don't want to save the world because this presents scaling problems. Instead, save a little corner of the world and be open about how you are doing it. If you do this right, then you will garner lots of imitators. Then if your way of "saving the world" is well documented and robust enough to avoid the "cargo cult" pitfall, you will convince some large part of the world to save itself.<p>Note the implication: You don't save the world by telling it, "You're doing it wrong." You save the world by getting the world to covet your success.
There is less insane way to personal insights - <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html</a>
Am I the only one having a hard time reading lisp?<p>Non-functional programs read like plain English. Particularly Python but I just can't get my head around the functional ones.
This book seems inspired by _why's poignat guide to ruby book <a href="http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-1.html" rel="nofollow">http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-1.htm...</a> Not that that's a bad thing, but I'm just surprised, no one else has mentioned the same.
Typical Lisp propaganda: many brave non lispers are part of the functional, brevity, continuation and DSL guilds. And it chooses to ignore that the biggest battle was won by the type system guild...
who write this crap? i wrote in lisp (scheme), this is the most bugged language i ever used. and i used more then 5.<p>this is non debugable language, it it makes it bug full. you have to follow complex ideas, and keep scores of ideas, this is not for normal humans.<p>when you pass the wrong type and not support it, it goes to hell, and as a programmer you start to flame.<p>list, is a piece of shit for the masses, its useful for handful, who didn't distribute the ideas well, and people when to the place where it was easier to write code, and less is needed for getting your path going.