Are you anticipating that the various web development toolkits become better than Rails? Or are you anticipating that web developers will need so much more complex programming techniques that they will have to move to lisp?
From where I'm sitting (with the names of several Ruby extremists in my phonebook), I know that the things that grabbed them were standard libraries that they liked, including easy RMI and network usage. By contrast, there is no single free lisp distribution that comes with a comprehensive, well-documented, and easy-to-use set of libraries, as well as an easy way to upgrade them, preferably involving untarring, and none of the fragility of ASDF.
hey, it's just a guess. in the last couple of months there's been a lot of background noise involving lisp, fueled in part by reddit (yeah, yeah, i know they ported it to python). so the brew is on.
from:anonymous date:Jan. 5th, 2006 12:30 pm (UTC) Link
Reg Braithwaite has written an interesting piece (http://www.braithwaite-lee.com/weblog/2006/01/finding-signal-to-noise-ratio-in-never.html) on language choice and adoption. He suggests that people have picked up on Ruby on Rails because it helps them do familiar things with less effort; the actual language features may not play much of role at first. But I have to hope that as people use Rails they also learn some actual Ruby, and learn about metaprogramming and such, or least stop seeing it as "weird" or "wrong" or "dangerous".
If and when these things start becoming more familiar, Lisp will seem less alien. Ruby (with the help of Rails hype) has elevated the attention to dynamic languages and twisty, reflective metacoding. 2006 may or may not be the year of Lisp, but it can't help but get more attention because there are few discussions about what makes Ruby special that don't include a mention of Lisp.
One possible roadblock: Lisp libraries and portability. Please tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems there are issues with being able to code complex Lisp apps (e.g., stuff involving networks, disk I/O) on one OS and easily deploy to another. I'd love to take a shot at writing Web apps in Lisp but I want to develop on Windows and Linux and deploy on Linux and not have to jump through hoops or run Cygwin or some Unix emulation layer.
I believe that there are portable libraries for most things. Unfortunately, no-one maintains a distribution that is kept up-to-date and widely recommended, as a way for people to a) get up and running quickly b) avoid work on porting things.
Also, comprehensive docs and tutorials for those libraries would be great, as I said.
In fact, there may be some candidates for this, but I don't think that they have a great following. Does anyone know the status of "lisp in a box", or whatever it's called?
On what basis?
from:![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
the_ophiolater
date: Jan. 4th, 2006 10:29 pm (UTC)
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From where I'm sitting (with the names of several Ruby extremists in my phonebook), I know that the things that grabbed them were standard libraries that they liked, including easy RMI and network usage. By contrast, there is no single free lisp distribution that comes with a comprehensive, well-documented, and easy-to-use set of libraries, as well as an easy way to upgrade them, preferably involving untarring, and none of the fragility of ASDF.
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Re: On what basis?
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pfig
date: Jan. 5th, 2006 01:22 am (UTC)
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Is this a rant, abuse or idiocy?
from: anonymous
date: Jan. 5th, 2006 12:05 am (UTC)
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Re: Is this a rant, abuse or idiocy?
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the_ophiolater
date: Jan. 5th, 2006 03:33 pm (UTC)
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Maybe. All depends.
from: anonymous
date: Jan. 5th, 2006 12:30 pm (UTC)
Link
Reg Braithwaite has written an interesting piece (http://www.braithwaite-lee.com/weblog/2006/01/finding-signal-to-noise-ratio-in-never.html) on language choice and adoption. He suggests that people have picked up on Ruby on Rails because it helps them do familiar things with less effort; the actual language features may not play much of role at first. But I have to hope that as people use Rails they also learn some actual Ruby, and learn about metaprogramming and such, or least stop seeing it as "weird" or "wrong" or "dangerous".
If and when these things start becoming more familiar, Lisp will seem less alien. Ruby (with the help of Rails hype) has elevated the attention to dynamic languages and twisty, reflective metacoding. 2006 may or may not be the year of Lisp, but it can't help but get more attention because there are few discussions about what makes Ruby special that don't include a mention of Lisp.
One possible roadblock: Lisp libraries and portability. Please tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems there are issues with being able to code complex Lisp apps (e.g., stuff involving networks, disk I/O) on one OS and easily deploy to another. I'd love to take a shot at writing Web apps in Lisp but I want to develop on Windows and Linux and deploy on Linux and not have to jump through hoops or run Cygwin or some Unix emulation layer.
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Re: Maybe. All depends.
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the_ophiolater
date: Jan. 5th, 2006 03:32 pm (UTC)
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Also, comprehensive docs and tutorials for those libraries would be great, as I said.
In fact, there may be some candidates for this, but I don't think that they have a great following. Does anyone know the status of "lisp in a box", or whatever it's called?
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attentative surfer
from: anonymous
date: Jan. 14th, 2006 05:18 am (UTC)
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Oh, you must have heard about my new (http://cvs.codeyard.net/svn/LispCMS) CMS (http://cvs.codeyard.net/LispCMS/)? :-P
</joke>
-- BdLr
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