A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp

ssilcoon about 4 hours ago 50 commentsRead Article on scotto.me

HI version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

89% Positive

Analyzed from 1891 words in the discussion.

Discussion (50 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

nobleach•about 2 hours ago

Since a few folks here recommended Common Lisp to me as the language that would "tick all my boxes", I've been doing a deep dive. Right now, I'm working through SICP again with DrRacket. The first time I worked through it with MIT Scheme MANY years ago. It's shocking how much I've forgotten.

What I like about this article is that it walks through the different "camps" of Lisp. Scheme is so intriguing to me because of how small it can actually be. I can build nearly any paradigm I want to exist. The problem is, if I were to actually go find a job where they were using a Lisp, (I hear those actually exist) they wouldn't want to use my "Result monad + match statement - railway pattern" that I've used from OCaml and Rust. So learning something that is truly "common" can make more sense.

As far as learning though, Scheme feels "just right". I've imposed a "no AI until I've found a working solution" rule that keeps my mind engaged. Couple that with a willingness to say, "I don't know that right now... I'll think about it throughout the day and maybe by this evening I'll have an answer".

AyanamiKaine•about 1 hour ago

I can also recommend clojure. For me it has the best parts of common lisp and the best of the java ecosystem. But its also quite different from common lisp and scheme. Different enough to find some unique ideas.

Writing scripts using [0] Babashka is also really nice.

[0] https://babashka.org/

snorremd•3 minutes ago

As a former Clojure dev (now just using Clojure in my spare time) I love Babashka. Michiel Borkent really nailed it with sci (Small Clojure Interpreter) and Babashka. Running a custom Clojure interpreter in a GraalVM compiled Clojure app is quite clever.

Now there are of course limitations to what you can do in terms of not supporting Java reflection or the full Clojure compiler. But I've made some nifty small scripts and convenience helpers with it. And the dev experience of making these scripts is so much nicer than trying to write bash scripts. The Clojure edn syntax is super simple, and the REPL connected editor let me rapidly test parts of the code just like with full Clojure apps.

I don't have experience with other lisps, but I can vouch for Clojure being very nice. The community was welcoming and friendly to newcomers when I started learning, I hope it still is. One thing I love about the Clojure ecosystem and community is the effort taken to never break libraries. I've looked at libraries I used some ten years ago, and the API is still compatible with code I wrote back then. There is very little churn. Maybe this is because the language is largely untyped and editors only partially check "types". Having breakages in libraries you consume once every couple of months would get really tiring in Clojure land. I'd imagine the same problems would present themselves in Common Lisp and others.

nobleach•about 1 hour ago

I particpated in a Clojure reading group for "Getting Clojure" back around 2017. Having the entire JVM ecosystem available, is absolutely a great benefit. I even fooled around with ClojureScript a bit. David Nolen is great at making the case for both.

jlarocco•29 minutes ago

On a related note, there's a cross-platform Common Lisp package, "Bike" https://github.com/Lovesan/bike, that lets you use .Net assemblies from Common Lisp.

I've used it a tiny bit at work (on Windows) and at home (on Linux), and ran into one issue with "out" parameters, but otherwise it works really well.

waffletower•11 minutes ago

Babashka is really nice indeed. Am hopeful for the C++ hosted Clojure dialect, Jank (https://jank-lang.org)

pratikdeoghare•about 1 hour ago

Shut up and learn Common Lisp using Practical Common Lisp.

This would be my advice. Why? My own road was haphazard. Other books broaden your mind and teach you really cool tricks. This book gets you using lisp like you would say golang. But it still teaches you the lisp things and broadens your mind. Time spent choosing will be better spent reading this book. After that PAIP, On Lisp, SICP etc.

mktemp-d•about 1 hour ago

Piggy backing to apply more recommendations too.

An Introduction to Programming in EMacs Lisp is also good for the first few chapters even if you don’t use emacs because you are given fundamental concepts of lisp that can be applied to the understanding of other dialects. It’s also free.

Learn you a Haskell (despite Haskell being not a flavor of list, they share similar DNA ) is great at understanding functional programming with lisp like languages.

em-bee•about 1 hour ago

that's the book i learned with. it got me far enough that i was able to write two applications that i ended up using for several years.

groundzeros2015•about 2 hours ago

For me the complete spec is the killer feature. You can learn Common Lisp in 1990 and write it the same now. As long as we can keep the compilers alive it will be forever.

It’s funny to me that it was critiqued for being “bloated” when now it looks like a focused minimal library.

dismalaf•about 1 hour ago

Common Lisp wasn't standardised until 1994.

Also, SBCL has some nice features specific to them, I'm sure it's the same for other implementations. So while there's a lot that's common between them all I find myself using a lot of platform specific functions.

Jtsummers•about 1 hour ago

Yes, but it existed before then (from 1984 on), and a large amount of code written for CL pre-standardization still runs without alteration or with minimal updates.

kscarlet•19 minutes ago

PSA: VSCode users deserve to use the OLIVE plugin (https://github.com/kchanqvq/olive).

belmarca•37 minutes ago

Gambit Scheme (https://github.com/gambit/gambit) is a highly performant Scheme implementation (https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/). Gerbil (https://cons.io) is built on top of it.

Both highly recommended.

dieggsy•about 2 hours ago

CL also has pretty much arbitrarily extensible syntax:

- https://sr.ht/~dieggsy/whisper/

- https://dieggsy.com/json-literals.html

And could also be used to build languages, supporting more modern programming paradigms (though yes, I believe Racket does make this easier):

- https://coalton-lang.github.io/

I also might have written the Common Lisp example using reduce as well, which is in the standard library, but that's preference. Nice to have the option though:

  (defun calculate (instructions)
    (reduce
     (lambda (result op-value)
       (destructuring-bind (operation value) op-value
         (case operation
           (:add (+ result value))
           (:subtract (- result value))
           (:multiply (* result value)))))
     instructions
     :initial-value 0))

  (calculate '((:add 5) (:multiply 3) (:subtract 4))) ;; => 11

BoingBoomTschak•about 2 hours ago

I'd have used

  (funcall (ecase operation (:add '+) (:subtract '-) (:multiply '*)) result value)

instead, looks funkier =)

dieggsy•about 2 hours ago

Oh yeah, way more fun :) I just kinda saw CL in the Clojure and was trying to make it look like that.

goatking•about 1 hour ago

I just wish a good IDE existed so I don't have to use Emacs. That's what made me drop lisp in the past.

I would be happy with (neo)Vim setup as well, but that was way behind Emacs and broken when I tried.

ux266478•16 minutes ago

LispWorks - https://www.lispworks.com/

goatking•12 minutes ago

Thanks.

However, price for hobby user license at 750 USD is laughable.

jacobobryant•30 minutes ago

as of now neovim works great with clojure, not sure about other lisps. vs code also.

goatking•18 minutes ago

I am/was mainly interested in Common Lisp. I might give Vim another try, that would be the best if it worked. I really don't like vscode

iFire•about 1 hour ago

Since this is the largest gathering of LISP users I have seen, I have a question.

Why prefer lisp-1 over lisp-2 or vice-versa?

Jtsummers•28 minutes ago

Ignoring all the other distinctions between lisps, the main difference between lisp-1 and lisp-2 (or lisp-n) is going to be how clean your code looks when you lean into the FP style. In a lisp-2 you'll need to do something like this:

  (defun apply-twice (f x)
    (funcall f (funcall f x)))

  (apply-twice #'1+ 2)

Versus this with a lisp-1:

  (define (apply-twice f x)
    (f (f x))

  (apply-twice 1+ 2) ;; assuming 1+ is defined

But there are so many other differences between the lisps in the two categories that this probably won't be the deciding factor for most people.

jwr•35 minutes ago

As someone who has used both kinds over many, many years: it really doesn't matter.

dismalaf•42 minutes ago

IMO if we look at Lisps today the question looks more like: SBCL, Chez Scheme, Racket or Clojure.

Common Lisp and Racket are Lisp-2s but honestly, the namespace thing seems like a minor difference compared to all the other features that differentiate them.

0xb0565e486•about 2 hours ago

I really wanted to Lisp as a main programming language, and sometimes I still do.

I just find readability such a hurdle regardless of how long I used it. I didn't find that it ever became as natural as the other group of programming languages.

I find a procedural style of programming so much easier to reason about, both when writing and reading.

Either way, I'm really happy I took some time to learn it and use it a little at some point.

ux266478•about 1 hour ago

Lisp really needs extensive structural editing tools IMO, and you really have to change how you think about reading source text and that can take longer than you might think. The best Lisp experience by far and away is LispWorks. That being said, I never found it to be to my tastes either. Too much focus on making tree-representations of programs the centerpoint, which isn't how my internal grammar works. I'd much prefer less explicit delimitation where it's not actually needed, but that's also incompatible with the goal of sexprs.

Jtsummers•about 1 hour ago

Common Lisp code can be very procedural if that's what you want to do. The entire loop macro is basically importing Algol-styled procedural loops into Lisp.

em-bee•41 minutes ago

that's the conclusion i came up with after learning common lisp. it didn't feel much different from what i had learned before.

dieggsy•about 2 hours ago

For me, the most effective way to read Lisp is to essentially forget the parentheses (I shadow them out in matching, low contrast colors) and go almost entirely by indentation. I find this makes it more similar to reading other languages, though granted not exactly the same.

You do have to keep up with the parentheses of course, but editor settings or extensions can make this automatic if not invisible.

groundzeros2015•about 2 hours ago

(Heresy alert. Inb4 homoinconcity)

I do find that most of my lisp skills carry over to JavaScript quite well while allowing me to write imperative functions more fluently.

Prog blocks are pretty good. I wonder if another DSL could be better.

hnarayanan•about 2 hours ago

Maybe because Brendan Eich was tasked with "doing Scheme in the browser" before it pivoted to JavaScript.

lvncelot•about 1 hour ago

Imagine what could have been...

whartung•about 1 hour ago

> I find a procedural style of programming so much easier to reason about, both when writing and reading.

Then do that.

There's nothing stopping you from using pretty much any style of programming that you like. Or mix and match. Or evolve over time.

Loops, lists, arrays, structures. Simple iteration: dotimes, dolist, loop. If those are your bread and butter, then feast! CL will happily do that. That's what I do. I just don't think "functionally" when I do CL code, I'm just not there yet, so its unnatural for me, and not what comes spewing out of my fingers when I write code.

And it's "OK".

You don't have to use the other features of the language, but they're there if you want to dip your toe into it.

With CL, also, I tend to be really wordy on variable and function names. I'm really fond of kabob-case-for-identifers.

hnarayanan•about 3 hours ago

So many words to say: Scheme.

nobleach•about 2 hours ago

Perhaps, but Chicken? Guile? Chez? They're all pretty cool.

tmtvl•about 1 hour ago

R5RS, R6RS, or R7RS?

criddell•about 3 hours ago

Another Lisp of note is AutoLISP.

Elisp::Emacs as AutoLISP::AutoCAD. AutoLISP was my first introduction to Lisp-style language. When I first started using it (1987) for macros in AutoCAD, I really had no idea what Lisp was. It was just a fun and easy way to automate AutoCAD.

timonoko•18 minutes ago

Adding and subcontracting 3D-objects was the same as in OpensCAD.

Strange they did not make OpenSCAD in AutoLISP-style.

I have to read the manual all the time, because I never learn the weird syntax of OpenSCAD for-statement.

hnarayanan•about 2 hours ago

I had forgotten about this. The last I saw this was 20+ years ago!

wollowollo•about 2 hours ago

I wonder if Hylang is still alive.

bbkane•about 1 hour ago

There's also Rhombus now: https://docs.racket-lang.org/rhombus-quick/index.html

varjag•about 1 hour ago

I use Common Lisp daily. But pondering programming language choices is nearly pointless now that the models have eaten the trade of programming.

BoingBoomTschak•about 2 hours ago

(Disclaimer: CL weenie) A decent and balanced writeup IMO. But it should really have contained the following:

Warning about the issues that come with ANSI CL's frozen spec (threads/sockets/unicode/extensible sequences/gray streams/etc... as extensions with a varying amount of support with compatibility layers often available to write portable-ish code, "bolted-on" CLOS never fully integrated) and its various rust spots, not just the good points.

Mention that CL has provisions for gradual typing (with limits) which are exploited by SBCL.

Scheme, obviously, along with the same warning as CL about pain of writing portable code that interacts with the OS (does it have compatibility layers like CL?) amplified by the R6RS vs unfinished R7RS-large mess.

A few words about the build system/third-party packaging situation and alternative implementations.

ynniv•about 2 hours ago

I have a work-in-progress called Modus. 100% written by Claude, so take that however you will. The current release boots on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. The next release (unreleased in the pipe for ~ months) is standard Common Lisp on bare aarch64 (pi) and x64 (qemu for now), with linux aarch64 and x64 command line interfaces à la sbcl.

https://github.com/modus-lisp/modus

Since you can't use an OS by itself, I've rounded out the Common Lisp environment with portable ssh client and server, web browser, and a bitcoin node. Framebuffer with VNC in the pipe

whartung•about 1 hour ago

That's pretty neat!

God help me if I fell down a hole like that.

I must say, however, that e.g. code like (compile-compound) is something only an AI can love!

ynniv•about 1 hour ago

i've spent decades reading and writing code. i just want something that works

davidw•about 1 hour ago

When people have a lot of choices, that can create problems, because it's often the people with the least information trying to make that choice.

For instance "I'm new to Lisp, I want to try one..." is a person without a lot of background and information to make that choice. And they probably realize it and it makes them nervous about making that choice.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

ChrisArchitect•about 2 hours ago

A road to Lisp: Why Lisp

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845209