* Emacs website, Lisp, and other
2024-08-05 20:03 ` Emacs website, Lisp, and other Alan Mackenzie
@ 2024-08-05 21:07 ` Christopher Dimech via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of other Emacs mailing lists
2024-08-06 7:42 ` Jean Louis
2024-08-06 11:14 ` Immanuel Litzroth
2 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of other Emacs mailing lists @ 2024-08-05 21:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alan Mackenzie; +Cc: emacs-tangents
Alan, we both opened a discussion on tangents.
> Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2024 at 8:03 AM
> From: "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de>
> To: emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs website, Lisp, and other
>
> Hello, Emanuel.
>
> On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 00:55:48 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> > Jeremy Bryant wrote:
>
> > > Lisp is the most powerful and elegant of programming
> > > languages. If you want to see how powerful and elegant
> > > a programming language can be, you need to learn Lisp.
> > > It will give you standard for measuring other languages.
>
> > Ah, I don't know, that kind of boasting. Powerful and elegant
> > are both immeasurable things, well, maybe in electrical
> > engineering one can measure it.
>
> > > Calling Emacs Lisp "python-like" is derogatory to Emacs
> > > Lisp. Python has some of the characteristics that make Lisp
> > > superior, but not all of them.
>
> > Okay, then everyone should know this is a controversial thing
> > to say. No one, or very few, would recommend Emacs Lisp as an
> > alternative to Python 2024.
>
> > It will sounds like we are a bunch of fanatics boasting from
> > our own echo chamber were, inside it, we all are fantastic and
> > high on Lisp.
>
> > Lisp's superiority is a myth.
>
> > To me it is more like a drug :)
>
> To understand the opposite point of view, read one of Paul Graham's
> essays at https://paulgraham.com/icad.html, where he describes 9
> novelties introduced by Lisp into programming in 1958, and how most, but
> not all, of these have since been adopted by lesser languages.
>
> My own view is that Lisp indeed is one of the top languages, but that
> Common Lisp is too big, and thus too difficult, to learn for most
> programmers. For those who succeed in learning it, their productivity
> will be enormous whilst using it. Maybe this productivity could be
> matched by other "strange" languages (Haskell, perhaps?), but not by
> "normal" languages such as C, C++, Java, Python or perl. I think it a
> pity that a moderate sized Lisp, something around the size of Emacs Lisp
> without the cl-* extensions, never made it as a general purpose language
> alongside the above.
>
> > --
> > underground experts united
> > https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
> ---
> via emacs-tangents mailing list (https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents)
>
---
via emacs-tangents mailing list (https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs website, Lisp, and other
2024-08-05 20:03 ` Emacs website, Lisp, and other Alan Mackenzie
2024-08-05 21:07 ` Christopher Dimech via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of other Emacs mailing lists
@ 2024-08-06 7:42 ` Jean Louis
2024-08-06 11:14 ` Immanuel Litzroth
2 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Jean Louis @ 2024-08-06 7:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alan Mackenzie; +Cc: emacs-tangents
* Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> [2024-08-05 23:04]:
> To understand the opposite point of view, read one of Paul Graham's
> essays at https://paulgraham.com/icad.html, where he describes 9
> novelties introduced by Lisp into programming in 1958, and how most, but
> not all, of these have since been adopted by lesser languages.
I have read it, of course articles by Graham are very insightful.
> My own view is that Lisp indeed is one of the top languages, but that
> Common Lisp is too big, and thus too difficult, to learn for most
> programmers.
My personal view on Common Lisp at the time when I was learning it was
that it was childish simple as compared to previous programming
languages I knew. I even got impression that people who loved Guile,
Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Common Lisp are bragging over the childish easy
language. Learning was not hard, it was pleasure, and I was feeling
like coming back home.
Jean
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---
via emacs-tangents mailing list (https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread
* Re: Emacs website, Lisp, and other
2024-08-05 20:03 ` Emacs website, Lisp, and other Alan Mackenzie
2024-08-05 21:07 ` Christopher Dimech via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of other Emacs mailing lists
2024-08-06 7:42 ` Jean Louis
@ 2024-08-06 11:14 ` Immanuel Litzroth
2 siblings, 0 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Immanuel Litzroth @ 2024-08-06 11:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alan Mackenzie; +Cc: emacs-tangents
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Matthias Felleisen has done work on comparing programming languages:
https://jgbm.github.io/eecs762f19/papers/felleisen.pdf
Also some of the practical aspects of using Python vs other languages have
been documented here:
https://haslab.github.io/SAFER/scp21.pdf
i
On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 10:03 PM Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hello, Emanuel.
>
> On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 00:55:48 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> > Jeremy Bryant wrote:
>
> > > Lisp is the most powerful and elegant of programming
> > > languages. If you want to see how powerful and elegant
> > > a programming language can be, you need to learn Lisp.
> > > It will give you standard for measuring other languages.
>
> > Ah, I don't know, that kind of boasting. Powerful and elegant
> > are both immeasurable things, well, maybe in electrical
> > engineering one can measure it.
>
> > > Calling Emacs Lisp "python-like" is derogatory to Emacs
> > > Lisp. Python has some of the characteristics that make Lisp
> > > superior, but not all of them.
>
> > Okay, then everyone should know this is a controversial thing
> > to say. No one, or very few, would recommend Emacs Lisp as an
> > alternative to Python 2024.
>
> > It will sounds like we are a bunch of fanatics boasting from
> > our own echo chamber were, inside it, we all are fantastic and
> > high on Lisp.
>
> > Lisp's superiority is a myth.
>
> > To me it is more like a drug :)
>
> To understand the opposite point of view, read one of Paul Graham's
> essays at https://paulgraham.com/icad.html, where he describes 9
> novelties introduced by Lisp into programming in 1958, and how most, but
> not all, of these have since been adopted by lesser languages.
>
> My own view is that Lisp indeed is one of the top languages, but that
> Common Lisp is too big, and thus too difficult, to learn for most
> programmers. For those who succeed in learning it, their productivity
> will be enormous whilst using it. Maybe this productivity could be
> matched by other "strange" languages (Haskell, perhaps?), but not by
> "normal" languages such as C, C++, Java, Python or perl. I think it a
> pity that a moderate sized Lisp, something around the size of Emacs Lisp
> without the cl-* extensions, never made it as a general purpose language
> alongside the above.
>
> > --
> > underground experts united
> > https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
> ---
> via emacs-tangents mailing list (
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents)
>
--
-- A man must either resolve to point out nothing new or to become a slave
to defend it. -- Sir Isaac Newton
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---
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread