Tag: Lisp

Parents:

• Programming languages

Children:

• Scheme

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Alan Kay speaks

Bill Clementson's Blog: The Most Important Idea in Computer Science (via Chris Double).

Favorite quote, from Alan Kay: "Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS." Note that Kay is one of the inventors of Smalltalk.

Update: Phil Windley - Alan Kay: Is Computer Science as Oxymoron? Phil was at the talk and has lots of notes from it. Worth a read. Via Paul Hammond.

Permalink | Comments? | Tags: Alan Kay, Computer science, Java, Lisp | id 7976

00:06 (utc-6)
edited: 2006-02-27 21:29 (utc-6)

 

Monday, February 20, 2006

1. The Chicken Scheme Compiler (via PLNews):

   CHICKEN is a [BSD-licensed] compiler for the Scheme programming language. CHICKEN produces portable, efficient C, supports almost all of the current Scheme language standard... and includes many enhancements and extensions. CHICKEN runs on MacOS X, Windows, and many Unix flavours.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Scheme]

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

1. reddit just rewrote their site in Python. It was originally written in Lisp.

   Lisp is an amazing language. After spending the entire summer working entirely in Lisp, it's nearly impossible to work in another language and not say to myself, "If only this were Lisp..." Lisp has many goodies that make programming in it a joy: the REPL, macros and the lack of syntax are some. I won't go into the details, but rest assured, it's cool. People become Lisp zealots for a reason.

   So why Python?
   
   We were already familiar with Python. It's fast, development in Python is fast, and the code is clear. In most cases, the Lisp code translated very easily into Python. Lots of people have written web applications in Python, and there's plenty of code from which to learn. It's been fun so far, so we'll see where it takes us... I'm very pleased at the way [the rewrite] turned out... The entire task took less than a week, with 80% of the code written in a single weekend.

   I liked what Paul Graham (Lisp guru, and one of the founders of Y Combinator, the VC firm that funded reddit) said about the rewrite in Python.

     ¶ (1) Tags: [Lisp, Programming, Python]

Saturday, December 3, 2005

1. Eric Kidd: Why Ruby is an acceptable LISP (via John Wiseman). To read.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Lisp, Programming, Ruby]