Does anyone code with LISP?
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If so, what are the advantages over other programming languages. I always hear it mentioned when reading about programming theory, but never had the opportunity, or inclination, to try it out because I was busy learning other languages for which I was getting paid. Is there anything I can learn from getting familiar with LISP or is it a language that was once ahead of it's time but now relegated to the annals of 20th century computer history?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesIn the 80s, I worked on an NLP parser (for a small subset of English) in Lisp at DEC's AI Technology center in Hudson, MA. Its purpose was to translate a natural language English query into input to drive XCON (at the time, the world's largest expert system). When I moved to XCON, I used OPS5 to write production rules. Lisp was deemed inefficient for that purpose because OPS5's pattern matching algoritm algorithm was much faster than evaluating a Lisp function. I don't know where Lisp is used nowadays - apart from Emacs macros. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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If so, what are the advantages over other programming languages. I always hear it mentioned when reading about programming theory, but never had the opportunity, or inclination, to try it out because I was busy learning other languages for which I was getting paid. Is there anything I can learn from getting familiar with LISP or is it a language that was once ahead of it's time but now relegated to the annals of 20th century computer history?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
If so, what are the advantages over other programming languages. I always hear it mentioned when reading about programming theory, but never had the opportunity, or inclination, to try it out because I was busy learning other languages for which I was getting paid. Is there anything I can learn from getting familiar with LISP or is it a language that was once ahead of it's time but now relegated to the annals of 20th century computer history?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesI do not use LISP, Clojure, Scheme or any of those variants. However, there is much to be gained by learning a different programming style than the imperative form that most of us are used to with C-like languages. Functional programming is based on functions and variables. For any value x that you pass into function f(x), you will always get the same result. There are no side-effects, state, or mutable data. The concept sounds foreign and useless at first. However, I recently wrote a library with Template-Meta Programming (TMP), and to my surprise, TMP in C++ is basically functional programming. I had to go about solving my problems in different ways. When I completed the library, and returned to my normal programming tasks, I found that I approached my problem solving in a different way, even though I was no longer using a functional programming language. One of the things that I learned to do was complete a complex task in a very elegant manner, with very little code when I was using functional programming constructs.
To know and not do, is not yet to know http://www.codeofthedamned.com
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If so, what are the advantages over other programming languages. I always hear it mentioned when reading about programming theory, but never had the opportunity, or inclination, to try it out because I was busy learning other languages for which I was getting paid. Is there anything I can learn from getting familiar with LISP or is it a language that was once ahead of it's time but now relegated to the annals of 20th century computer history?
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesI used it for a while years ago at college and Uni. Horrible language in my opinion that seemed pretty pointless. Other languages seem to do list processing quite well these days now anyway. LISP was incredibly hard to read.
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I've downloaded Lisp a couple of times in the past and started to work with it and learn and after about 2 days I think what the hell would I do with it? I've started to get into Python and want to learn it to run on Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black if I can ever get it unbricked.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
Mike Hankey wrote:
Beaglebone Black if I can ever get it unbricked
Ouch! I must have missed that one - how did you brick it?
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Mike Hankey wrote:
Beaglebone Black if I can ever get it unbricked
Ouch! I must have missed that one - how did you brick it?
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
Evidently it's something that happens sooner or later, it's an experimenters board you just reflash it or boot from from uSD and your back in business. That's the selling point. Well I'm learning Liunx and BBB so I tried for a couple of days to get an image to boot from uSD=>No luck. So in my wiseness I think why don't I try to backup the image to the uSD, because I can mount and R/W to/from the uSD so I do a linux dd command but I got the source/destination backwards so I overwrote part of my image and when I reboot can no longer ssh into BBB. So I thought no problem I'll just reflash it...wah thanks for playing! So it seems the BBB is not as stable a platform as they say it is.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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Evidently it's something that happens sooner or later, it's an experimenters board you just reflash it or boot from from uSD and your back in business. That's the selling point. Well I'm learning Liunx and BBB so I tried for a couple of days to get an image to boot from uSD=>No luck. So in my wiseness I think why don't I try to backup the image to the uSD, because I can mount and R/W to/from the uSD so I do a linux dd command but I got the source/destination backwards so I overwrote part of my image and when I reboot can no longer ssh into BBB. So I thought no problem I'll just reflash it...wah thanks for playing! So it seems the BBB is not as stable a platform as they say it is.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
Oooo...nasty. Did they just laugh when you told them, or are they going to do something? (This is why I may be old-fashioned, but I like a minimum boot loader in EPROM rather than flash...)
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Oooo...nasty. Did they just laugh when you told them, or are they going to do something? (This is why I may be old-fashioned, but I like a minimum boot loader in EPROM rather than flash...)
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
I wrote a long pleading email for information and told them when I tried to flash with the uSD in the slot none of the lights came on and they wrote me back asking if the same thing happened without the uSD and I wrote back yes and the last I heard, but to be fair I answered on Thursday so they may not have had time to answer. But quite frankly I don't expect them to do anything about it. So I should have went with my original choice and got a Pi, which I have since ordered. From all the research I've done since the bricking it seems like the Pi will be a little more Mike proof. :) I did find a post that someone had done the exact same thing and it seems that if you overwrite upper memory that is where some of the bootloader resides and so you have to use a serial device and go in and manually tell the it to boot from the uSD??? I haven't tried yet am waiting for Adafruit to get back to me plus not sure if my USB to serial card will work at 3.3V? Right now it's a software/firmware problem I don't want to compound the problem.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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I wrote a long pleading email for information and told them when I tried to flash with the uSD in the slot none of the lights came on and they wrote me back asking if the same thing happened without the uSD and I wrote back yes and the last I heard, but to be fair I answered on Thursday so they may not have had time to answer. But quite frankly I don't expect them to do anything about it. So I should have went with my original choice and got a Pi, which I have since ordered. From all the research I've done since the bricking it seems like the Pi will be a little more Mike proof. :) I did find a post that someone had done the exact same thing and it seems that if you overwrite upper memory that is where some of the bootloader resides and so you have to use a serial device and go in and manually tell the it to boot from the uSD??? I haven't tried yet am waiting for Adafruit to get back to me plus not sure if my USB to serial card will work at 3.3V? Right now it's a software/firmware problem I don't want to compound the problem.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
Serial (well, RS232) is a nominal +12V/-12V, so there will be a USART or similar converter to switch from the internal +3.3V/0V the device uses so there shouldn't be a hardware problem. I'd leave it until the manufacturers had had a good chance to answer before playing myself though. You could make it worse! :laugh: If it makes you feel better, I have a bricked Linksys Media Hub with 1TB HDD sitting on a shelf gathering dust, so it's not just experimental devices that do it. :sigh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Serial (well, RS232) is a nominal +12V/-12V, so there will be a USART or similar converter to switch from the internal +3.3V/0V the device uses so there shouldn't be a hardware problem. I'd leave it until the manufacturers had had a good chance to answer before playing myself though. You could make it worse! :laugh: If it makes you feel better, I have a bricked Linksys Media Hub with 1TB HDD sitting on a shelf gathering dust, so it's not just experimental devices that do it. :sigh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
OriginalGriff wrote:
Serial (well, RS232) is a nominal +12V/-12V, so there will be a USART or similar converter to switch from the internal +3.3V/0V the device uses so there shouldn't be a hardware problem. I'd leave it until the manufacturers had had a good chance to answer before playing myself though. You could make it worse!
Thanks that's kinda what I thought but as you say I want to wait for the distributor to get back to me.
OriginalGriff wrote:
If it makes you feel better, I have a bricked Linksys Media Hub with 1TB HDD sitting on a shelf gathering dust, so it's not just experimental devices that do it.
I had a couple of XBee modules that did the same thing, hadn't used them for a couple of years??? I tend to push things to the limit so it doesn't surprise me that I bricked the BBB, it's a new device and not as stable as the Pi. I knew that going in but thought it a better choice because of the added I/O and such. Shit happens! On a lighter note, I'm taking a class on embedded systems and they require a $13 32-bit ARM development board[^] for use in the class and when I got it and started working with it I really like it and may use it on my rover instead of the AVR boards I was going to use. Very impressive! The only downside to arm development is the price of the IDEs...whew! Guess I'll be using Eclipse!
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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JimmyRopes wrote:
Does anyone code with LISP
No, I tend to be pretty quiet with my headphones on. I don't talk to people much, unless I need to discuss something with my cohort in crime. But even then, I don't talk with a lisp.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave KreskowiakIt is cruel to have a p in the word to describe a lisp. :-D
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
I've downloaded Lisp a couple of times in the past and started to work with it and learn and after about 2 days I think what the hell would I do with it? I've started to get into Python and want to learn it to run on Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black if I can ever get it unbricked.
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
Mike Hankey wrote:
after about 2 days I think what the hell would I do with it?
That is what has stopped me so far, what can I do with it? Sorry to hear your beagle is sick.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Lisp is these days really a family of languages, although many people consider Common Lisp to be "the real Lisp". Anyway, currently the most popular Lisp dialect seems to be Clojure and here is the rationale for creating that language[^].
Thanks for the information.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
Mike Hankey wrote:
after about 2 days I think what the hell would I do with it?
That is what has stopped me so far, what can I do with it? Sorry to hear your beagle is sick.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopesJimmyRopes wrote:
Sorry to hear your beagle is sick.
Thanks don't know yet whether on critical list but doesn't matter...shit happens!
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
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In the 80s, I worked on an NLP parser (for a small subset of English) in Lisp at DEC's AI Technology center in Hudson, MA. Its purpose was to translate a natural language English query into input to drive XCON (at the time, the world's largest expert system). When I moved to XCON, I used OPS5 to write production rules. Lisp was deemed inefficient for that purpose because OPS5's pattern matching algoritm algorithm was much faster than evaluating a Lisp function. I don't know where Lisp is used nowadays - apart from Emacs macros. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Thanks Ravi
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
I used it for a while years ago at college and Uni. Horrible language in my opinion that seemed pretty pointless. Other languages seem to do list processing quite well these days now anyway. LISP was incredibly hard to read.
Mike Diack wrote:
Other languages seem to do list processing quite well these days now anyway.
That is what I was thinking that it had it's day in the mid 20th century. I just always hear mention of it while reading what some of the pioneers of computer science say so I wondered if it was still relevant.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
OriginalGriff wrote:
Serial (well, RS232) is a nominal +12V/-12V, so there will be a USART or similar converter to switch from the internal +3.3V/0V the device uses so there shouldn't be a hardware problem. I'd leave it until the manufacturers had had a good chance to answer before playing myself though. You could make it worse!
Thanks that's kinda what I thought but as you say I want to wait for the distributor to get back to me.
OriginalGriff wrote:
If it makes you feel better, I have a bricked Linksys Media Hub with 1TB HDD sitting on a shelf gathering dust, so it's not just experimental devices that do it.
I had a couple of XBee modules that did the same thing, hadn't used them for a couple of years??? I tend to push things to the limit so it doesn't surprise me that I bricked the BBB, it's a new device and not as stable as the Pi. I knew that going in but thought it a better choice because of the added I/O and such. Shit happens! On a lighter note, I'm taking a class on embedded systems and they require a $13 32-bit ARM development board[^] for use in the class and when I got it and started working with it I really like it and may use it on my rover instead of the AVR boards I was going to use. Very impressive! The only downside to arm development is the price of the IDEs...whew! Guess I'll be using Eclipse!
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
I like ARM as a processor (and they are a nice company to speak to as well) - I used ARM7/ARM9 ten or so years ago in assembler and Embedded C++ and was very impressed. But...the software developer kit costs were ridiculous at around $7500 per user back then! :omg: Nowadays you can (in theory) target VS2012 at ARM and it should compile C++, but I have no idea about libraries and so forth for a bare-bones system. I'll admit that Eclipse is one of the things that has put me off learning Android development! :laugh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt -
Thanks Ravi
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
I do not use LISP, Clojure, Scheme or any of those variants. However, there is much to be gained by learning a different programming style than the imperative form that most of us are used to with C-like languages. Functional programming is based on functions and variables. For any value x that you pass into function f(x), you will always get the same result. There are no side-effects, state, or mutable data. The concept sounds foreign and useless at first. However, I recently wrote a library with Template-Meta Programming (TMP), and to my surprise, TMP in C++ is basically functional programming. I had to go about solving my problems in different ways. When I completed the library, and returned to my normal programming tasks, I found that I approached my problem solving in a different way, even though I was no longer using a functional programming language. One of the things that I learned to do was complete a complex task in a very elegant manner, with very little code when I was using functional programming constructs.
To know and not do, is not yet to know http://www.codeofthedamned.com
Paul Watt wrote:
I found that I approached my problem solving in a different way, even though I was no longer using a functional programming language.
Interesting. I am interested in learning functional programming, but haven't had the time yet. I am currently working on developing agents to do robotic trading on the Foreign Exchange market. Do you think functional programming will have relevance in market analysis?
Paul Watt wrote:
One of the things that I learned to do was complete a complex task in a very elegant manner, with very little code when I was using functional programming constructs.
Very interesting. Can you be coaxed into an article explaining how to implement functional programming constructs in non-functional languages? Thanks for the insight.
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
Think inside the box! ProActive Secure Systems
I'm on-line therefore I am. JimmyRopes -
I like ARM as a processor (and they are a nice company to speak to as well) - I used ARM7/ARM9 ten or so years ago in assembler and Embedded C++ and was very impressed. But...the software developer kit costs were ridiculous at around $7500 per user back then! :omg: Nowadays you can (in theory) target VS2012 at ARM and it should compile C++, but I have no idea about libraries and so forth for a bare-bones system. I'll admit that Eclipse is one of the things that has put me off learning Android development! :laugh:
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
I'm using a lite version of uVision that limits code size to 32K which is not to bad but it's ~$2800 based on the Eclipse IDE and I'll admit it's a good system but the editor sucks. When I first started doing embedded I looked at using Eclipse and got feed up after a couple of days of trying to get the debugger to work that I gave up. But when I got the BBB and installed the ARM plugin I was a lot more impressed with it. So it's either; 1) Live with the 32K lite version of uVision 2) Gulp...Learn to use Eclipse 3) Sell an appendage, I'd have to check on this one thou I think the ex got dibs on them in divorce. :)
VS2010/Atmel Studio 6.1 ToDo Manager Extension Relax...We're all crazy it's not a competition!
