Prev: common-lisp.net?
Next: anyone using lisp on gumstix?
From: Tamas K Papp on 21 Jan 2010 10:26
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:20:41 -0800, Pillsy wrote:

> On Jan 21, 8:19 am, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...]
>> I can't pin down why, the but whole language just feels very "lispy".
>
> One thing I've noticed is that it looks like it's dedicated to providing
> the sorts of amenities you get with a mature Lisp system, and that you
> all too often don't get with "modern" dynamically typed languages that
> were designed by mutation from a "scripting language" ancestor. I don't
> have much interest in the language itself[1], but the overall philosophy
> of providing a fully-featured development environment with a good
> optimizing compiler is very appealing.
>
> Cheers,
> Pillsy
>
> [1] Not due to any evident shortcomings, but because the whole "stack-
> based" thing just doesn't appeal to me.

I found another (short) discussion on c.l.l about Factor,

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/23d92be674a62733/4bde31965c89c57c?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=factor#4bde31965c89c57c

which didn't generate a lot of interest either :-) I guess I am in
the "cool, but not immediately relevant to me" camp about Factor too.

Tamas
From: Kaz Kylheku on 21 Jan 2010 10:58
On 2010-01-21, Tamas K Papp <tkpapp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:06:53 +0100, Nicolas Neuss wrote:
>> Maybe a Forth-like DSL could be interesting, but I have the impression
>> that a stack-based language like Forth lives from the fact that most
>> (all?) functions have a fixed arity. This does not work well together
>> with the CL way of functions having optional and keyword arguments.
>
> That's what I thought initially. But it appears that you can do
> keyword parameters quite "naturally" with a tuple:
>
> http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Concatenative%20language/Keyword%20parameters

How about adding a new parameter to a function that is called
from many places in a large Factor program? Or adding keyword
paramters to a function which hitherto doesn't have them?

In a typical static language, the compiler would flag the places
where the call must be fixed up.

In a typical dynamic language, we'd get it at compile time too, and
failing that, at least at run time.

In a stack language, we get a mysterious stack underflow in some
/other/ function. Good luck!
From: Paul Donnelly on 21 Jan 2010 17:40
Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> writes:

> On 2010-01-21, Tamas K Papp <tkpapp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:06:53 +0100, Nicolas Neuss wrote:
>>> Maybe a Forth-like DSL could be interesting, but I have the impression
>>> that a stack-based language like Forth lives from the fact that most
>>> (all?) functions have a fixed arity. This does not work well together
>>> with the CL way of functions having optional and keyword arguments.
>>
>> That's what I thought initially. But it appears that you can do
>> keyword parameters quite "naturally" with a tuple:
>>
>> http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Concatenative%20language/Keyword%20parameters
>
> How about adding a new parameter to a function that is called
> from many places in a large Factor program? Or adding keyword
> paramters to a function which hitherto doesn't have them?
>
> In a typical static language, the compiler would flag the places
> where the call must be fixed up.
>
> In a typical dynamic language, we'd get it at compile time too, and
> failing that, at least at run time.
>
> In a stack language, we get a mysterious stack underflow in some
> /other/ function. Good luck!

That doesn't seem to be a big problem for the Factor developers. I agree
that it sounds like trouble, but I don't think you could do what they've
done without an easy way to deal with the issue.
From: mdj on 21 Jan 2010 22:31
On Jan 21, 6:42 pm, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:34:05 -0800, vippstar wrote:
> > On Jan 20, 4:34 pm, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Please understand that this is not flamebait...
>
> > No, it couldn't even be that.
>
> Indeed.  That is a pity: I have seen good discussions here about
> languages which are not nearly as interesting as Factor.

I for one am quite interested in such a comparative discussion. Forth
like languages share many (conceptual) things with lisps, it'd be nice
to see comparisons or explorations of what makes Factor different.

There's always something to learn.

Matt
From: Tim Bradshaw on 23 Jan 2010 09:54
On 2010-01-21 15:26:26 +0000, Tamas K Papp said:
> I found another (short) discussion on c.l.l about Factor,
That was me, I think.

>
> which didn't generate a lot of interest either :-) I guess I am in
> the "cool, but not immediately relevant to me" camp about Factor too.

My motivation is that I've been interested in Forth for a long time,
and I was looking for something which I could play with. Factor's
clearly got a lof ot Forth-influence, and I thought it was a fine &
interesting language with a good environment. I stopped using it
purely because of lack of time.

First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: common-lisp.net?
Next: anyone using lisp on gumstix?