Looking forward to time tourism. Would be great fun to go back to 1993 and chat about On Lisp, get in touch with Chris Carter about his upcoming series, and catch the In Utero tour. (Among other things.)
Earlier this year, I was working for a small software company whose products were mainly PHP and Perl programs held together with duct tape. Our manager was doing some spring cleaning by removing old programming books from our shelf, shouting the titles out, and tossing them in a trash bag.
After a dozen obsolete books on Windows, Visual Basic, and so on, he shouted out "On Lisp". I was already using Clojure at home, and I recognized the author, so I lunged for it. None of the other programmers had even heard of Lisp, and had no idea why we had the book, so they let me keep it. I wonder how many other old, crusty software shops have gems like that just collecting dust.
>"None of the other programmers had even heard of Lisp..."
To the HN crowd, this is almost unbelievable, but it is not the worst I've heard. This summer, going on a vacation, I sat next to a working programmer who's knowledge of programming and the programming languages begins and ends with C#. He had no knowledge of Ruby, Perl, Python, open source, git, ...
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The guy didn't know that such things such as open source, git, Ruby, Python, Perl,... even existed. I find it impossible to browse the web and not to run into them, but it seems to be quite possible.
most people on my course are like that. at the start about 90% didnt know what a programming language is and about 50% didnt know what WYSIWYG stands for...
I have a couple of older books that were found in the same manner. From people who studied anything computer related in the 70s and 80s. I lost some copies on a flood, but still have a small, but nice collection. Including one of those "Teach Yourself Perl Guide Books", with Internet Explorer 5 as a bonus (on a CD).
About as well as anything related to Common Lisp. It's abstract enough that some of the macro patterns are reusable in Clojure, but we don't often use them in Clojure.
Anybody that wants a deeper understanding of Lisp should read, but with the understanding that it's not a shake-n-bake recipe book.
The last time I wrote an anaphoric macro (let alone the scope-capturing one), the Clojure IRC channel had a heart-attack.
I read it about ten years ago. Do not remember anything, because I was never able to find work as a Common Lisp programmer. Would have been fun. I know that things in the lisp community change very slowly, and wanted to know if the book was still relevant. Might give it a second go.
Is Clojure "lighter" (for a lack of a better term) than lisp?
37 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] thread[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html
winner 1993 world baseball series - Toronto Blue Jays. Now take the winnings and buy Netscape stock:-)
And Clojure isn't for me. I'm no JVM user.
I took the better part of a year to feel quite comfortable with Lisp. A few years later, I am still learning things.
It does take you in a different direction than all of the most popular languages. Personally, it has been worth the effort.
After a dozen obsolete books on Windows, Visual Basic, and so on, he shouted out "On Lisp". I was already using Clojure at home, and I recognized the author, so I lunged for it. None of the other programmers had even heard of Lisp, and had no idea why we had the book, so they let me keep it. I wonder how many other old, crusty software shops have gems like that just collecting dust.
To the HN crowd, this is almost unbelievable, but it is not the worst I've heard. This summer, going on a vacation, I sat next to a working programmer who's knowledge of programming and the programming languages begins and ends with C#. He had no knowledge of Ruby, Perl, Python, open source, git, ...
before i began i knew (well enough to make use of) C, vala and a small amount of lisp and PHP
[1] http://thinkrelevance.com/blog/2008/12/12/on-lisp-clojure
[2] http://blog.fogus.me/tag/onlisp/
Insane.
But shows how much a classic it is.
Anybody that wants a deeper understanding of Lisp should read, but with the understanding that it's not a shake-n-bake recipe book.
The last time I wrote an anaphoric macro (let alone the scope-capturing one), the Clojure IRC channel had a heart-attack.
What's the full address?
Is Clojure "lighter" (for a lack of a better term) than lisp?
Easier to learn in some respects, yet deeper if you look for it.
I've found it easier to teach Clojure than I had Common Lisp in the past, yet Clojure has helped me to grow more as a programmer.
There's very little that you can do in CL, that you cannot in Clojure. That which you can't is often very limited and unimportant ultimately.
There are many things that are either impossible or hopelessly painful in Common Lisp that are commonplace in Clojure.
It is shocking how much code I write in Clojure is either:
1. Stateless
2. Stateful and multi-threaded, yet thread-safe.
Discussion 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6273692
In the discussion was mentioned this link (thanks @nonrecursive!) with instructions to print your own copy on lulu :
http://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html