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The Case Against Lisp - And When Would I Choose Lisp Today?
Aug 18, 2023, 9:13:00 PM

I wrote an article back in 2015 entitled The Case for Lisp .  It lays out a simple argument, founded on expressiveness, for choosing Lisp.

Now I would like to lay out some reasons why one might not choose Lisp for a project. Focusing on Common Lisp for this article.

  1. The very s-expression syntax which enables structural macros which gives lisp some extra expressiveness power vs most other programming languages, also serves to make the code harder to read for the vast majority of people. Perhaps the flexibility of s-expression syntax is overweighed by the increased cognitive overhead required to read the code.  Even after I spent quite a lot of time reading and writing lisp over a period of several years, I would still find it a bit more challenging to read lisp code than to read, for example, java code.
  2. I think in the age of autocomplete and ide-assisted coding, lisp's OOP model and function comes before object mentality is less ergonomic than the dominant object.method paradigm.  Consider `(bark dog)` vs dog.bark() to see what I mean.  The latter syntax is extremely amenable to autocomplete in an IDE and provides some "namespacing" to the bark() method where it won't pollute the global autocomplete context but instead only comes up in the context of the dog object.
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Tagged: Lisp
Testing FFI Hot Loop Overhead - Java, C#, PHP, and Go
May 14, 2023, 9:00:00 AM

I wanted to compare the FFIs of a few popular programming language to evaluate 1. the ease of use of the FFI functionality and 2. their minimal overhead in a hot-loop scenario. I chose java, c#, php, and golang for my experiment.

This is in no way representative of FFI usage in the general case -- just indicative of overhead of calling a minimal function.

The code for this experiment is here: https://gitlab.com/vancan1ty/ffihotloopexamples .  The JNI code was based off of this github repo by RJ Fang: https://github.com/thefangbear/JNI-By-Examples .

All tests are run on my Dell Precision M4800 laptop. I evaluate three scenarios across several languages.

Scenario 1 is as follows -- we loop up to LOOPMAX --  which I set to 2000000000L -- and perform a few simple operations including a bit of modulus arithmetic and conditional logic to keep the loop from being unrolled by the compiler.

        Utilities util = new Utilities();
        long st1 = System.currentTimeMillis();
        long counter = 0;
        while(counter < LOOPMAX) {
            counter = util.addOne(counter);
            if(counter % 1000000 == 0) {
                counter = counter + 10;
            }
        }
        long et1 = System.currentTimeMillis();

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Tagged: Java .NET
Remotely Modifying a Running Program Using Swank
Oct 28, 2017, 12:00:00 AM

One of the strengths of Common Lisp is that it includes support for dynamically redefining classes and functions at run-time, while keeping data intact. Theoretically at least, this should enable support for keeping programs continually running in production while changing pieces of them – "Common Lisp Recipes" by Edi Weitz includes the following disclaimer about this functionality

If you'e ever talked to experienced Lispers, you've probably heard "war stories" of huge and complex systems to which substantial modifications were applied while they kept running and without interrupting the services they provided. Although this sometimes has to be taken with a grain of salt, it is in fact true that many COMMON LISP features were designed from the ground up to be dynamic in the sense that they can be changed at run time. This includes CLOS, where an object can change from one class to another, and where classes can be modified, although they already have objects "hanging off" of them.

– "Common Lisp Recipes" by Edi Weitz, section 13-8

My understanding is that some of this functionality at least is difficult/nonstandard to replicate in other languages such as Python and Java (please feel free let me know that I am wrong if that is the case!).

Anyway, I would like to remotely interact in lisp with remote instances of my current project I am working on – dumb-mq – so I figured it would be helpful to start with a small example of remote connection/redefinition.

Portacle IDE

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Tagged: Lisp emacs
How to Designate Single Window for Popup Buffers in Emacs
Aug 20, 2017, 12:00:00 AM

This blogpost is inspired by the approach found here.

One of the things that used to annoy me about programming in emacs with SLIME mode (common lisp), is that SLIME would frequently choose to open up a popup buffer in one of the windows I was trying to use for some other task. For instance, various actions in SLIME will open up a Completion Buffer, Debugger Pane or an Inspection Buffer. I eventually realized that what I really wanted was to designate a given window where all emacs popups would open by default, so my train of thought in the other windows can remain undisturbed. Below is some Emacs Lisp code that enables this functionality:


  

 

                

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                Criteria for Software Freedom
            

            
Mar 15, 2016, 12:00:00 AM

        

        

            
 
 
  

   

    
"Free software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, "free software" is a matter of liberty, not price

    
– Free Software Foundation

   

   

    
1 Introduction

    

     
The FSF's definition of free software, written above, is a useful broad principle which relates to how much control a human user has over a given computer program. In this article, I discuss some specific criteria which we can use to assess "Software Freedom".

     
I think the typical definition which people think of when they think "free software" is simply whether the software is open-source, or perhaps even if the software costs nothing to use. However, while these users are correct for some definition of "free software", I, like the FSF, think it can be useful to load the term "Free Software" with more implications in order to better capture the nature of the relationship of a human user to a piece of software. What is important is not really what the legal status of a piece of code is, but rather the practical level of control which a user has over that code. In this era of ever-increasing computer technology, I think it becomes more and more important that humans can control the computations which they use, and not the other way around.

     

    

   

  

 

                

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                When to use TeX vs Org-Mode vs OpenOffice
            

            
Feb 9, 2016, 12:00:00 AM

        

        

            
 
 
  
Originally posted 2016-02-09

  

   
There are a number of tools out there which allow you to compose documents. Three of my favorites are TeX, Emacs org-mode, and OpenOffice. Each of these tools is open-source and allows the user to script and modify their experiences.

   
Below are some factors which I think are helpful to consider when choosing between these document-preparation tools.

   
Use TeX when:

   
    
    
  1. You want output with very high quality appearance.
    2. 
    
  2. You want to take advantage of TeX's powerful layout algorithms and routines.
    3. 
    
  3. You want to typeset a bunch of mathematics.
    4. 
    
  4. You want the document to be version-controlled using Git or similar SCM system.
    5. 
   

   
Use Emacs org-mode when:

   
    
    
  1. Content is king, and you don't at this stage want custom layout.
    2. 
    
  2. You don't need access to the underlying layout engine.
    3. 
    
  3. You want to enter content, including mathematics, in a distraction-free and straightforward way.
    4. 
    
  4. You want easy export to LaTeX, PDF, and HTML.
    5. 
    
  5. You want the document to be version-controlled within Git or similar SCM system.
    6. 
   

   
Use OpenOffice/LibreOffice when:

   
    
    
  1. Ease of composition is more important than highly polished end-product.
    2. 
    
  2. You are content with fairly standard and simple layout conventions – and don't require pixel-perfect control or algorithmic layout optimization.
    3. 
    
  3. Mathematical typesetting is not that important to the document.
    4. 
    
  4. You need to edit the document in conjunction with other users who are not technical and do not know TeX.
    5. 
    
  5. You want integration with OpenOffice Calc (spreadsheet).
    6. 
    
  6. 
   

  

 

                

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