Fri, 19 Jul 2013 23:07:06 GMT
The following was a nightly rant about ... well, Lisp and everything. Not to be taken too seriously, but hopefully giving some opportunities for discussions.
It started by my comment about my opinion on opinions, "I'll just wait until mine becomes trendy again ... because that is likely to happen someday." When my dialog partner answered "That sounds like a pep talk for Lispers", this is what I wrote:
Well, the bad habits of Lisp have spread. The good things are also slowly spreading. I have not heard the phrase in that context yet, though. The usual ideal is the "Smug Lisp Weenie". Well, many Lispers will argue that there is Clojure, and also Scheme is actively developed, even though mainly in incarnations like Racket. To me, Clojure is shit, and Scheme is rather a toy. Of course, Perl, Python, PHP and C++ are also toys to me. Anyway, this is probably already too deep. From a more superficial point of view, many people are just like "we are still up to date", arguing with the plenty of libraries that can be found on the Cliki or in QuickLisp. Today's Lisp suffers from the same disease as all software these days: Today's Lisp is most likely Clojure, especially since a lot of pseudo-companies are funding it. And it is just like modern software has to be: It runs on the JVM, but - of course - only on two implementations, if you want it stable. There is a Dalvik-port, but it is commercial. There is an LLVM-port, also commercial. Furthermore, most of the code is write-only. And it is purely functional ... except that that does not really work if you want to be compatible with Java ... very important for modern software: the components MUST NOT fit together semantically. And the most important point: It is in a permanent beta-state. There are releases, but they are virtually meaningless. You see: Lisp is totally up to date. Ah, one further point: Ignore all knowledge and expierience that has been made so far, and try to rebuild everything, with a huge mouthful of the inner platform effect. Or, in the spirit of the wise Pandaschnitzel: Lisp is not good. That is why it is not widespread.