[pro] Learning Lisp the Bump Free Way

[Drew Crampsie]

On 20 January 2011 11:46, Alexander Repenning <ralex at cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
> Hi Drew,
> perhaps the point of a mailing list for professional lisp developers is to
> act, well ... professional?


Is it professional to publish what was intended as private
correspondence on a public mailing list?

> Remember one of the points made in original article about the Lisp
> community:  "The community isn’t nearly as blood thirsty as some people
> might portrait it."

I can't speak for the entire community, only for myself.

> Seems to me you just confirmed what many people appear to worry about. Well
> done.

I'm not going to get in this argument on this mailing list, i don't
think it's the place. If you'd like to have this discussion, please
feel free to email me privately.

Cheers,

drewc


> Alex
>
>
>
> On Jan 20, 2011, at 10:57 AM, Drew Crampsie wrote:
>
> On 20 January 2011 08:04, Alexander Repenning <ralex at cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> Common Lisp has gone STALE. The Common Lisp community preserves Lisp instead
> of advancing it.
>
> I participated in the creation of  this mailing list in part to get
> away from trolling like this on the other lisp forums. Is there no
> place on the interwebs safe from such bullshit?
>
> The 21 century computer science world need no more essays explaining why
> Common Lisp is the way it is (stale).
>
> And i'm not convinced a mailing list for professional lisp developers
> needs more diatribes explaining how _we_ should 'fix' Common Lisp to
> make it 'cool' again.
>
> Can we leave this sort of drivel on comp.lang.lisp where i have
> plonk-ability, and keep this mailing list for "people who already know
> and use Common Lisp and who don't want to discuss the
> merits of it or how other languages are worse or better"?
>
> Cheers,
>
> drewc
>
>
>
>
>
> On 20 January 2011 08:04, Alexander Repenning <ralex at cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> One point made:
>
> It’s probably faster than most dynamic languages.
>
> is still mostly true but as I am tracking the speed of JavaScript versus
> Common Lisp I can see a scary performance cross over point in the near
> future (months). Already, in some of our benchmarks JavaScript running in OS
> X Chrome is getting very close (10% gap) to Clozure Common Lisp. Why is
> that? Common Lisp has gone STALE. The Common Lisp community preserves Lisp
> instead of advancing it. The result: flatline! As far as I can tell non of
> the exciting JIT compiler technologies developed in the last couple of years
> have made it into any CL implementation. If you follow this trend you may
> conclude the right thing to do, if you want to continue to use Lisp, would
> be to compile it down to JavaScript, yes, JavaScript, not C or direct to
> binary.
>
> Same thing with IDEs: stale, flatline.. Perhaps with the exception of
> LispWorks it appears that most Lisp programmers are just fine with Emacs.
> Well, Emacs was great 35 years ago. Remember the actually innovative IDEs of
> Lisp on Lisp machines? Is SLIME really the best we can do now? Take Clozure
> CL. As far as I can tell most people, including some the developers perhaps,
> are using SLIME too. Start using something new. For instance start using the
> Cocoa based CCL IDE. Yes, still primitive but with real opportunities to
> create some fine IDE tools that actually would look OK even to a 21 Century
> computer science students. Nowadays, even browser (e.g., Safari and FireFox)
> have debugging tools built in that make SLIME look like last century
> technology that belongs to a computer museum.
>
> The Lisp community is not only small but also fragmented. The 21 century
> computer science world need no more essays explaining why Common Lisp is the
> way it is (stale). It is time to leap into action and to IMPLEMENT stuff
> that is not just interesting to the Common Lisp community but to computer
> science in general. Play with Clozure Common Lisp the IDE version (Mac and
> Window). Do not just get frustrated and switch back to Slime but ask
> yourself "what can YOU do for Common Lisp (or more specifically CCL) to make
> it cool again"
>
> best,  Alex
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 19, 2011, at 3:06 PM, Daniel Weinreb wrote:
>
> This is a very nice essay to help people get over their
>
> initial problems with Lisp:
>
> http://pavelpenev.posterous.com/learning-lisp-the-bump-free-way
>
> Prof. Alexander Repenning
>
> University of Colorado
>
> Computer Science Department
>
> Boulder, CO 80309-430
>
> vCard: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> pro mailing list
>
> pro at common-lisp.net
>
> http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pro
>
>
> Prof. Alexander Repenning
>
> University of Colorado
>
> Computer Science Department
>
> Boulder, CO 80309-430
>
> vCard: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/AlexanderRepenning.vcf
>
>