Comment by throwaway81523

2 days ago

Lisp generally has precise GC, which I'd say makes it light side. It's even relatively type-safe if you count runtime type-checking.

Highly reliable systems are written in Erlang, which if you squint is another Lisp dialect. There's even a sexp-based version called LFE, for Lisp-flavored Erlang. Erlang's key to reliability is error recovery, rather than exceptional levels of error prevention.

I do like your light side/dark side classification.

15 comments

throwaway81523

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sph  1 day ago

> Erlang, which if you squint is another Lisp dialect

Prolog disagrees. IIRC the first versions of Erlang were written in Prolog, and you can still see its influence in the syntax.

gf000  1 day ago

If you squint enough, JS is a lisp..

Define a goddamn language, syntax is not enough to define one! What are the semantics? Without that you are just talking about syntax trees like they would mean anything

  • bsaul  1 day ago

    never understood why people say that: the syntax for defining code seems quite different from the syntax defining data structure. There's no homoiconicity in javascript..

    • gf000  1 day ago

      And that's just syntax, it doesn't give you a programming language at all.

      JS is a dynamically typed language with prototypical inheritance objects that work like universal key-value maps for the most part. It is also mutable.

      Clojure is a dynamically typed language with key-value maps. It is also immutable.

      You can surely see where I'm going , the underlying semantic model is the meaningful part. Homoiconicity doesn't give you anything special if your language can parse itself and can eval code. It just makes these completely abstract implementations simpler.

      4 replies →

  • throwaway81523  1 day ago

    > If you squint enough, JS is a lisp..

    Yes, that is true. I'm not big on the idea that Lisp is defined by parentheses. The implementation strategies are another way to look at it. That doesn't capture it either, but it's an angle to try.

    • gf000  1 day ago

      So then what it is? Because otherwise it's a magical nothing-term to which everything lisp people like applies, but no criticism can ever reach it because "that's not really lisp, see it's different in this other implementation"

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