ANNOUNCE: Lisp Without Parentheses Project (Lispin) Site Open - Programming Languages

Bill Atkins <atkinw@rpi.edu> writes:

| Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> writes:
|
| > Many languages deriving heavily from Lisp have made to wider exposure
| > to the programming world (sometimes changing the way some people think
| > about programs) by building standardized links (FFI) to the
| > traditional "conventional" approaches.
| > That is the point in Joachim's message that I was expanding on.
|
| What is the problem with CFFI?

I don't see anything wrong with it.

In fact, I've been awaiting for something like that for quite a long
time. I'm very delighted to see that effort going on, and I hope it
will be more common. Unfortunately, it does not work yet with the
implementation of Lisp I have to work with. It comes almost half a
century after Lisp has existed; e.g. it will come tomorrow when I
needed it yesterday.

CFFI started by acknowledging the importance of FFI, and the lack of
standard FFIs. Nothing in that disagrees with what I said, nor did I
imply a marginalization of CFFI. I wish it all the best -- so that
communication between Lisp and the rest of the world is no more quagmire.

-- Gaby

Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:[color=blue]
> Pascal Costanza <pc@p-cos.net> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> | I also agree that languages like Lisp, Smalltalk and Prolog are
> | probably especially attractive for people who can imagine wholly
> | different approaches from what to others appears to be god-given. And
> | there may indeed be a desire involved to explore such alternatives
> | even further. I think that's a positive trait.
>
> Indeed, that is a positive trait.
>
> Many languages deriving heavily from Lisp have made to wider exposure
> to the programming world (sometimes changing the way some people think
> about programs) by building standardized links (FFI) to the
> traditional "conventional" approaches.
> That is the point in Joachim's message that I was expanding on.
>
> I'm skeptical that that missing standardized link from Lisp to the
> world of the world can be compensated by any amount of history recitation.
> Not that history count -- history is important.[/color]

Most importantly, history is not over.


Pascal

--
My website: [url]http://p-cos.net[/url]
Common Lisp Document Repository: [url]http://cdr.eurolisp.org[/url]
Closer to MOP & ContextL: [url]http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/[/url]

Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:[color=blue]
> Bill Atkins <atkinw@rpi.edu> writes:
>
> | Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> writes:
> |
> | > Many languages deriving heavily from Lisp have made to wider exposure
> | > to the programming world (sometimes changing the way some people think
> | > about programs) by building standardized links (FFI) to the
> | > traditional "conventional" approaches.
> | > That is the point in Joachim's message that I was expanding on.
> |
> | What is the problem with CFFI?
>
> I don't see anything wrong with it.
>
> In fact, I've been awaiting for something like that for quite a long
> time. I'm very delighted to see that effort going on, and I hope it
> will be more common. Unfortunately, it does not work yet with the
> implementation of Lisp I have to work with. It comes almost half a
> century after Lisp has existed; e.g. it will come tomorrow when I
> needed it yesterday.[/color]

Half a century ago, Unix/C didn't exist.


Pascal

--
My website: [url]http://p-cos.net[/url]
Common Lisp Document Repository: [url]http://cdr.eurolisp.org[/url]
Closer to MOP & ContextL: [url]http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/[/url]

Ar an triú lá de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Gabriel Dos Reis:
[color=blue]
> | Corporate backing is a plus, but neither required (Perl doesn't have
> | it) nor sufficient (Microsoft has been pushing Basic with little
> | success).
>
> C++ did not have a marketing department.[/color]

AT&T does qualify as corporate backing, however.

--
Santa Maradona, priez pour moi!

Ar an triú lá de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Gabriel Dos Reis:
[color=blue]
> [..] But, hey, Lisp has survived almost half a century that way, insulated
> from the world;[/color]

Bullshit; Lisp is as old as stack-based programming, and Lisp’s death (or
zombification, if you prefer) has been the failure of its programming
community to implement stack-based programming in easily-avaiable
applications and non-portable constructs. Imagine an Emacs Lisp with access
to the POSIX API in 1989, something that was then eminently possible; what
reason would there have been then for Perl?
[color=blue]
> it may very well succeed being in that situation for
> another half a century.[/color]

--
Santa Maradona, priez pour moi!

Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net> writes:

| Ar an triú lá de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Gabriel Dos Reis:
|
| > | Corporate backing is a plus, but neither required (Perl doesn't have
| > | it) nor sufficient (Microsoft has been pushing Basic with little
| > | success).
| >
| > C++ did not have a marketing department.
|
| AT&T does qualify as corporate backing, however.

Really? How much do you think they spent on marketing C++?

-- Gaby

Pascal Costanza <pc@p-cos.net> writes:

| Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| > Bill Atkins <atkinw@rpi.edu> writes:
| > | Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> writes:
| > | | > Many languages deriving heavily from Lisp have made to wider
| > exposure
| > | > to the programming world (sometimes changing the way some people think
| > | > about programs) by building standardized links (FFI) to the
| > | > traditional "conventional" approaches. | > That is the point
| > in Joachim's message that I was expanding on.
| > | | What is the problem with CFFI?
| > I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, I've been awaiting for
| > something like that for quite a long
| > time. I'm very delighted to see that effort going on, and I hope it
| > will be more common. Unfortunately, it does not work yet with the
| > implementation of Lisp I have to work with. It comes almost half a
| > century after Lisp has existed; e.g. it will come tomorrow when I
| > needed it yesterday.
|
| Half a century ago, Unix/C didn't exist.

they came to life only 30 years ago :-)

-- Gaby

"Wolfram Fenske" <int2k@gmx.net> writes:
[color=blue]
> Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org> writes:
>[color=green]
> > The third problem is that Lisp is a separate world, tool-wise. Lisp
> > comes with its own set of tools, which may be great but have their own
> > ergonomic paradigms, with their own mindset (and, of course, vice
> > versa: non-Lisp tools usually won't work well for Lisp work).[/color]
>
> Which tools are you referring to? IDEs, Debuggers, something else?
> This is not a trick question, I really want to know.[/color]

I don't know what Joachim is referring to, but I can give you one very
concrete example of such a situation, namely CLIM (the Common Lisp
Interface Manager). Many people come to CLIM with some experience
with other non-Lisp GUI toolkits, and they expect CLIM to work the
same way (attach event handlers to gadgets and do event-driven
programming).

CLIM, however, is completely different from any traditional GUI
library, and one can argue that something like CLIM could not even be
written in/for any traditional language.

--
Robert Strandh

Joachim Durchholz wrote:[color=blue]
> Alex Mizrahi schrieb:
>[color=green]
>> more deeply, there is an Intentional Programming thing. it actually
>> means something like programming languages deeply integrated with IDEs
>> [1].[/color]
>
>
> This interpretation of IP is just Microsoft's attempt at tying
> programmers into a proprietary binary format and IDE.[/color]

In my experience, IDE's are like training wheels. Beginners
depend on them. But people with some experience coding generally
don't need them, and there eventually comes a time when they just
get in the way.

Bear