An experienced developer, doing quantum computing and the author of Coalton, the library that brings Haskell-like type checking on top of Common Lisp (emphasis is mine):
If I had to maintain a 500,000 line program written in Haskell or Common Lisp, I'd choose Common Lisp, hands down, no question.
It's way easier to debug, way easier to depend on a stable language, way easier to optimize, way easier to interface with C, way easier to observe running program behavior, way easier to incrementally modify, etc. These are the truly valuable properties of maintaining a large behemoth of a system.
For as old and ugly and archaic as it is, Maxima was way easier for me to hack on and bug-fix than a comparable 25-year-younger C codebase a tenth of Maxima's size. And I've written and debugged a lot of C.
I don't deny the value of static types. They're invaluable. I'm a huge proponent of them, and I put my money where my mouth is, but static types aren't the pinnacle test of a language's ability to be lasting and maintainable.
stylewarning, 2024, on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/1enxizx/the_2024_so_developer_survey_spoke_highly_of_lisp/lhahr6o/
Where to start with CL:
- https://lisp-lang.org/
- https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/getting-started.html
- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl
- https://www.udemy.com/course/common-lisp-programming/?couponCode=CLOS-EXCLUSIVITY (my course, 7 hours of content and counting, explaining things that took me literally years to discover)
Top comments (0)