[Q] What do you think of Clojure and other LISP programming languages?

12    13 Jun 2015 05:44 by u/MrHyperbowl

I personally love Clojure. The code that I write in Clojure feels so much more crisp and concise compared to another programming language.

However, its no where near as popular as other "functional" programming languages, like Scala and Haskell, so I was curious as to the reason that people didn't want to adopt it.

14 comments

6 u/rawburt 13 Jun 2015 08:37

LISP languages are beautiful. It is one of the most elegant programming philosophies there are. Code as data...data as code. Limitless.

It's not the easiest realm to understand. It's not the most practical (in a sense) if you are building a team where you want a large pool of candidates. It might not even be the perfect answer for your specific problem domain. But, compared to other philosophies of programming languages... it takes the cake (in my mind).

Simple. Powerful. Amazing. Breath taking.

Derp.

1 u/MrHyperbowl [OP] 14 Jun 2015 03:49

Writing code is a LISP is like writing poetry.

1 u/theodcyning 14 Jun 2015 06:34

Any advice for somebody who is just starting Common Lisp and having some trouble with it?

2 u/rawburt 14 Jun 2015 06:40

For learning "the way" http://kysmykseka.net/koti/wizardry/Programming/Lisp/Scheme/The%20Little%20Schemer%204th%20Ed.pdf

For learning some practical bits http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Outside of books, you need to dedicate yourself to some achievable projects that you find fun and interesting. Like a guessing game. Or a MUD. Or a blog. If you don't have the drive to learn...you wont learn. Interesting projects usually create drive. If they don't, the project isn't interesting enough or you really just don't care. Think small. Work your way up.

0 u/theodcyning 14 Jun 2015 17:14

Thanks! Also, how do you feel about CL vs Scheme? It looks like CL is more practical, but Scheme looks more elegant and beautiful.

0 u/rawburt 14 Jun 2015 21:20

If you're trying to do something "relevant" or in the job market... Common Lisp seems to be the better route. If you're just exploring and having fun... Scheme is awesome. If you really want to explore.... you can try building your own Scheme and your own Scheme standard library, etc. Either way, make sure you're having fun.

0 u/cdt5050 17 Jun 2015 00:39

I think Scheme might be a better way to introduce yourself into CL-like thinking. Spend a week familiarizing yourself with Scheme, learn how to do a lot of basic things in it, then maybe jump over to CL if you want to be more "practical". CL is kinda tricky to figure out on its own. But if you're just programming for fun or personal projects, then maybe CL isn't where you want to go.

0 u/marcel 14 Jun 2015 11:13

I think even the syntax is beautifully simple—everything is just some a couple of parentheses.

1 u/btcprox 13 Jun 2015 07:00

What I've gathered on a superficial level is that the LISP family of languages are quite structured with little syntax ambiguity. But I get daunted by the numerous levels of brackets within brackets and I'm sure I'll probably break something by messing up the bracketing (())_(())