
(ABCL) - Common Lisp on the JVM - alrex021
http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/
======
alrex021
A bit off topic, check out JScheme <http://norvig.com/jscheme.html> a Scheme
implementation for the JVM.

Peter Norving wrote it initially as a way to learn Java in 1998. So he decided
he'd write Scheme implementation in Java in couple of hours.(I swear, his Java
code still looks better than mine today and he wrote it 11 years ago. :))

I see loads of code in JScheme that could have influenced Clojure to some
degree.

------
Raphael
How is it different from Clojure?

~~~
ilyak
It's different in that, being common lisp, it's actually useless. Might be fun
to tinker, tho, with its CLOS and stuff.

~~~
alrex021
Useless how?

It has all the relevant constructs you'd need and more. And it runs on a JVM
with access to Java lower level libraries.

Far from useless I'd say.

~~~
ilyak
Clojure is two years old and already has more useful software being written in
than CL.

CL is a failure, admit it.

~~~
neptun
> already has more useful software being written in than CL.

Like what? Those crippled Java wrappers?

> CL is a failure, admit it.

You are a failure, admit it. Since you are not popular (I don't know who you
are), you are useless. (Your broken logic in practice.)

~~~
ilyak
Nope it isn't.

I've heard about CL, know a few things about it, and it's a failure
nontheless.

Its problem isn't the unpopularity between Blub programmers; its problem is
its unpopularity even between geeks. Even language geeks!

~~~
neptun
So, you have "heard", really, I am amazed. You must really know a lot about
it.

Repeating your broken popularity based measurement applied to different group
of people does not make it any more correct, sorry.

~~~
ilyak
Sorry, but for programming language, popularity is everything. It's a social
phenomenon, it grows superlinearly with number of users.

And languages become popular and unpopular for a reason.

For common lisp, those reasons are:

It's ancient.

Parties interested in it can't agree on anything so its development is
stalled.

It claims to have a huge library which is tiny by 2009 standards, and doesn't
have vital things like network i/o or unicode. Yes, implementations support
those proprietarely, yet noone cares, because it's not in _standard_ libs.

It has problems with reflection, which is doubly awful for _a lisp_.

CLOS is interesting, but for most uses smalltalkingly simple OO would be much
more desirable.

Tool support is neliglible.

~~~
neptun
You clearly haven't used the language on real world project. In CL world,
there is enough people interested to develop actively several implementations.

Also, you (as others making opinion on language from blog posts) are for some
reason fixated on the idea of stuff in standard library. When it's not in
standard, it doesn't exist. Wrong.

You forgot that in CL, library developer has the same freedom as CL
implementer. You are welcome to roll your own continuations, embedded compiler
or transaction layer in your chosen popular blub for example.

All your reasons are superficial.

The "ancient" argument is not worth commenting.

Unicode has just about every CL already implemented.

Explain your reflection reservations. Heard about <http://common-
lisp.net/project/closer> ?

You can emulate single-dispatch of Smalltalk OO in exactly 0% of wrapper code.

And tools, I hardly miss something when tracing, profiling, code completion,
live upgrades, image snapshots are either solved by standard, implementation
or SLIME.

Also you forgot to write that "LISP is interpreted and slow" once again.

~~~
ilyak
"Also you forgot to write that" Okay. You want to argue with yourself not with
me, to the point when you start rewriting my claims. So, you go and argue with
yourself.

~~~
neptun
We can hardly argue about CL when you know nothing about it.

Your "arguments" seemed like common set of misconceptions about CL, the "LISP
is slow" is such a folklore that I thought you forgot to write it, that's all.

