Moving docstrings away from the code would make things worse, creating multiple copies would make it even worser.
kennytilton
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21 points
by kennytilton
over 2 years
ago
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cached 13 days ago
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20 points
by kennytilton
over 2 years
ago
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cached 13 days ago
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20 points
by kennytilton
over 2 years
ago
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cached 12 days ago
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15 points
by kennytilton
over 2 years
ago
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cached 6 days ago
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cached 3 days ago
The problem with comments is that no one ever changes them when the code changes even tho the comment is right there! don't you see it! change that,too!!!
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cached 14 days ago
"I'm curious what things hold back Lisp from being more popular."
Inertia. Things like Java and Python were close enough to C (syntax and imperative paradigm) that moving to them was just a minor course change. Lisp feels like a U-turn, though I have argued elsewhere it is not really. Meanwhile Java had Sun behind it, giving PHBs a vital warm fuzzy. Lisp looks like the north wall of the Eiger in winter to PHBs. The IDE problem just confirms anyone's fears if they even get that far, though Franz and Lispworks tried to address that by making unlimited-length trials of their fine IDEs available. Agreed on Emacs+Slime not being a good answer for noobs. "I focused on IDE's, but I'm also interested in the general question of what things can be done and not done to get more people into Lisp." Not to worry, it is happening, just step back and look at where languages are going, not the people. Steele famously describes Java as dragging people halfway from C++ to Lisp. Not sure about the fraction. :) Python moved a little more, and Ruby moved a little more. If Arc catches on it will constitute completion of the land bridge from static typing imperative languages to dynamically typed functional languages, but it does not matter because Common Lisp is starting to catch on anyway. And if you look at the ideas behind Lisp and why languages like Python and Ruby are doing so well, Lisp has already prevailed. My 2. |
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cached 13 days ago
Not "Archer"? Mad cool resonance there: minimal, accurate, fast, and Arc is short for arch. QED?
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11 points
by kennytilton
over 2 years
ago
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cached 1 day ago
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cached 23 days ago
I saw him speak on Arc at ILC 2003. Paul is a legendary Lisper (he made money with it after 1990! (And wrote two great books (and has evangelized it terribly effectively))), He would be welcome anyway, Arc would certainly seal the deal. What am I saying...
If pg wants to go, he'll be there? I just hope he calls out Norvig for being a traitor and switching to Python. :) A bit of a story here: |
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cached 23 days ago
No, it does not work that way, although people who do not understand macros (such as Guido) live in fear of that hobgoblin.
Macros are not used to create unrecognizable languages. They are used when an API has grown to the point where writing the code to use it can be automated. That is probably hard to parse if you fear macros, because you can only fear macros if you do not know how they are used. But the idea is simple. This little call tends to require this little call before it and this little call after it, or something like that. And this pattern appears often enough, or the Lisp developer recognizes it as the sort of thing that will appear again and again, and they just say, macro time! They then give the macro a totally comprehensible name derived from the bits of the API being hit and, golly, no confusion. The other time you see macros is in things like aif. There will only be so many of these, and they will confuse people not at all. It seems to me some people want macros to be a problem. They never are. |