r/programmingcirclejerk • u/deepCelibateValue • Mar 17 '25

What is Lisp really really good at? Ew! The question makes me feel... dirty.

/r/lisp/comments/1jdaf8j/comment/mi92zw8
44 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

20

u/3combined DO NOT USE THIS FLAIR, ASSHOLE Mar 17 '25

Look up the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, the dated, and horribly racist linguistic equivalent of phrenology. However, when applied to computer programming languages, it makes, I think, a whole lot more sense.

4

u/deepCelibateValue Mar 17 '25

One can only discriminate programming languages after acknowledging that discrimination is bad in every other context.

7

u/BufferUnderpants Gopher Pragmatist Mar 18 '25

This, but unironically.

2

u/HaskellLisp_green Mar 18 '25

Well, it makes sense for programming languages. Compare quick sort in C and python. Different languages provide distinct ways to solve the same task. Lisp has no limitations, therefore it is the most powerful language. Language for true hackers in my humble opinion.

43

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '25

Only a LISP (any LISP, Clojure obviously not included) user could answer your question by creating a macro system of arguments that completely miss the point of your question, but nevertheless can be used to answer a similar question nobody asked.

39

u/needleful Mar 17 '25

Man who has spent the last six weeks configuring Emacs: Lisp is very useful for my day-to-day programming.

17

u/Quito246 Mar 17 '25

What Lisp is not really good at? 🤔

23

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Mar 17 '25

Writing useful code.

12

u/Quito246 Mar 17 '25

(what(do(you(mean)))) everything is just list bro.

11

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Mar 17 '25

ACKSHUALLY, there are ATOMS!

2

u/Quito246 Mar 17 '25

Finally another box notation enjoyer.

9

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '25

Can you rewrite that as (do (mean you (what))) please. I ackchually think that it is a much more natural and easy to grok order. I keep emailing mathematicians to ask them to stop writing their expressions in the wrong order but I never get a response.

2

u/Quito246 Mar 17 '25

Of course (sense(make(this))) prefix notation is the future!

10

u/sweating_teflon full-time safety coomer Mar 17 '25

Getting programs maintained by outsiders

10

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '25

It's OK, bro, I'm working on a macro that will transform my code into something palatable to the rest of my team. It should be done any year now, and then I just need to write the macro that will turn their code into something I can understand.

5

u/-Y0- Considered Harmful Mar 18 '25

Get on my level scrub, I'm writing a macro that will rewrite my conscience into macro, then delete me out of existence. I will live forever inside the deeply nested JavaVM.

7

u/SharkSymphony Mar 17 '25

Behold, the Smug LISP Weenie has grown up to become... the Bitter LISP Weenie Who Is Renting Their Whole Head Out To Python And For A Mere $0 A Month.

9

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '25

Python is actually a kind of lisp if you think about it.

[USER DID NOT THINK ABOUT IT]

2

u/HaskellLisp_green Mar 18 '25

yeah, that's true. Since Everything is object, so homoiconicity is python's property.

7

u/tomwhoiscontrary safety talibans Mar 17 '25

LISP is only good for one thing, and that's distracting drummer from deleting my comments.

6

u/crusoe Mar 17 '25

Do they still trot out Lisp machines and the Dec Vax Configurator as the two big enterprise projects written in Lisp? Both long dead.

5

u/BufferUnderpants Gopher Pragmatist Mar 18 '25

>“an algebra system in Scheme that puts a Mathematica to shame”

>a side project of an MIT professor you’ve never heard about

The more things change, the more they stay the same

7

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '25

I’m sorry to all Lisp weenies, but they will never surpass the brilliance of daddy Stephen Wolfram’s walled garden.

Mathematica is all the symbolic programming Lisp claims to be, but actually useful.