Objective Advantages Of Lisp

The LispLanguageFamily? is often asserted to be better than most (or all) other languages, especially CeeLanguage and its relatives. However, partisans of these languages often argue that the claims of Lisp partisans lack objective support. This page is set up so that Lisp partisans can assert any objective and preferably quantitative reasons why Lisp is superior, either in a specific problem domain or in general, as well as for any counterarguments by Lisp detractors.

Ummm... wouldn't that have to be ObjectiveAdvantagesOfLispVersusLanguageX? Although Lisp has a few unique features, most of its features have been emulated by other languages over the years -- it's just that there aren't any languages that have all of them. - So write that. [He just did!]

See WhyWeLoveLisp. Subtract the section headed "Beauty". No kidding. This page is aggressive, talking about superiority, partisans, detractors and kicking ass. Unless it's rephrased, it's just another trap, since the only serious issue on this wiki is peoples' feelings of inferiority, which suggests to any lisper paying attention that this is the last page to contribute to, as it stands. Mu. Huh? Did you read the same page I did? What's aggressive about it?

I want to see code examples of semi-relistic situations where Lisp's kicks others' ass. Not wordy BrochureTalk.

Then go look at some.

If you know them so well, then just point out the best. Why is it that evanglists are afraid to point to specific spots in heaven?

• "Afraid"? Can't you be more inflammatory than that? Try taunting Lisper's mothers.
  • Well, I have it on good authority that PaulGraham's mother is a hamster, and eez father smells of elderberriez.

Not afraid. Weary. How many places do links have to be gathered together? How often the same links repeated? What's the matter with your fingers?

---

Best Lisp Examples By Category

• Business
  • Small: ?
  • Medium: ?
  • Big:
    • YahooStores? (though it was re-written in C++--a rewrite which required full-on GreenSpunning, and lost features)
    • Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) airfare pricing and shopping system developed by ITA Software. Useful link: http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/data_mining/itastory.php3

• Systems Programming
  • Small: ?
  • Medium: ?
  • Big:
    • The LispMachine--is this big enough? If not, move it to medium.
    • The ConnectionMachine -- Supercomputing in StarLisp?

• Other
  • Small: ?
  • Medium: ?
  • Big: Emacs. OK, part of it's written in C; but it's a pretty big application.

No one could come up with any examples in any category! That proves that Lisp sucks and that Lispers are all full of hot air! Finally we've resolved the issue. And proven the intellectual superiority and moral saintliness of LispSkeptics?.

• I came up with 3 off the top of my head, and I'm not even a SmugLispWeenie!
  • Even wanna-be Lisp-weenies can't come up with any, that proves Lisp sucks!
  • Yahoo had to rewrite it in C++ because the Lisp implementation sucked...The Lisp Machine sucked both because it died off, proving its non-competitiveness and also because it was only good for running Lisp, which sucks, so QED. And Emacs sucks, so there's a third reason that Lisp sucks. -- SJ [Uh, Doug--??? -- ScottJohnson]
    • I was just trying to stir up more trouble. ;-)

---

[moved from CeeIsNotThePinnacleOfProcedural]

I have yet to see a procedural language that has all my favorite features (OOP popularity has frozen procedural language progress IMO), but if you are itching for an existing language to compare, maybe try LISP.

Huh? LISP is a FunctionalProgrammingLanguage, not a procedural one.

Actually, CommonLisp for example is a MultiParadigmProgrammingLanguage, with extremely good support for functional, imperative, and OO programming (I think imperative programming is what is meant above by 'procedural' programming). Lisp did invent functional programming, but it hasn't stood still since the 50's. Lisp did not invent functional programming.

• It was quite a while before Lisp had useful first-class functions. Dynamically-scoped lambdas are just about useless; until SchemeLanguage (and later CommonLisp) brought LexicalScoping into Lisp, many of the tricks that FunctionalWeenies take for granted were unavailable to the SmugLisp? variety of weenie. :)

---

See: HowCanSomethingBeSuperGreatWithoutProducingExternalEvidence, DynamicStringsVsFunctional, ArrayDeletionExample, ObjectiveAdvantagesOfFp, LispShowOffExamples