state-of-lisp-family/presentation.org

#+TITLE: State of the Lisp Family
#+DATE: 2016-07-14
#+AUTHOR: Lily Carpenter
#+EMAIL: lily-presentation@azrazalea.net
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* Introduction
** All about me
- I do NOT use lisp at work. I write ruby (on rails) and javascript
- I have only been part of the lisp community for a couple years
- I am most experienced with Common Lisp, Emacs Lisp, and Clojure
- I have played with Guile briefly
- I have a blog at [[https://azrazalea.net][azrazalea.net]] and git repositories on [[https://gitlab.com/azrazalea/][gitlab]]
- This presentation is on gitlab at [[https://gitlab.com/azrazalea/state-of-lisp-family]]
** A very very brief history
- Lisp(NOT common lisp) was first specified in 1958
- Many many dialects of Lisp have appeared over the years. See [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)][wikipedia]]
- The general hallmark of a Lisp is its s-expression based syntax (informally SO MANY PARENTHESES!!!)
- Originally heavily used in academic circles and AI
- Now mostly limited to small communities (Yes Clojure is still small)
** Why care about lisp?
- First and foremost lisp is FUN
- Lack of syntax and s-expressions are very freeing once you get used to them (and have a good editor)
- A very smart community that can sometimes be hard to get into
- Code as data is awesome
* Common Lisp
** Brief History
- Work started in 1981, draft published 1984, 2nd draft 1990, final standard 1994
- The language itself has not changed since this standard was published
- Language improvements done as implementation specific extensions
- Many things can be implemented as macros/reader-macros and shipped as libraries
- [[https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/][Quicklisp]] (a library manager) released in October 2010
** Implementations
- There are many different implementations of the CL standard
- Commercial: Allergro CL, LispWorks
- Open Source: ABCL, Clasp, Clozure CL, CLISP, CMUCL, ECL, MKCL, SBCL and more
- Popular free ones are SBCL and CCL(Clozure CL). Both fast and cross platform
** Features
- CLOS (Common Lisp Object System)
- Pretty much every standard data structure
- Optional tail call optimization
- Robust package (think namespace) system
- Build manager (asdf)
- Library manager (quicklisp)
- Fast with the right implementation
** Problems
- Old and crotchety (community and language)
- Sometimes large differences between implementations (usually patched over with a cross-implementation library)
- Some simple things baked into most modern langs are implementation specific (threads, garbage collection, FFI, Networking stuff, OS stuff)
** Projects
- Pretty much everything new on my gitlab
- Mcclim [[https://github.com/robert-strandh/McCLIM]] cross platform GUI/Windowing library
- Lots of game programming libraries at [[https://github.com/lispgames]]
- See [[http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015]] "State of the Common Lisp Ecosystem, 2015"
- Libraries for almost everything you'll want to do
** Real world uses
- Used at grammarly [[https://www.grammarly.com/]] [[http://tech.grammarly.com/blog/posts/Running-Lisp-in-Production.html]]
- Open source Evernote alternative https://turtl.it/. Server is in Common Lisp
- Commercial examples at [[http://franz.com/success/]] and [[http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/index.html]]
- There seems to actually be quite a bit of it, just not advertised and generally closed source.
- See [[https://lispjobs.wordpress.com/]]
** Resources
- Practical Common Lisp [[http://gigamonkeys.com/book/]]
- Common Lisp Recipes (for after PCL) [[http://weitz.de/cl-recipes/]]
- Land of Lisp (fun alternative to PCL [love the comics]) http://landoflisp.com/
- Common lisp hyperspec [[http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index.htm]]
- Duckduckgo hyperspec search with !clhs
- For the love of lisp, use Emacs + SLIME(or the newer sly) as your REPL even if not your editor
** CLASP
*** Purpose
- "Seamless" integration with C++ using LLVM.
- Speed and power of existing C++ code combined with the rapid prototyping, incremental dev, and other common lisp advantages.
*** Projects
- Mostly academic use so far.
- Read creator's blog here: [[https://drmeister.wordpress.com/]]
- I don't know of any production use cases yet, but it is pretty cool!
** ECL
*** Purpose
- Supports many platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, Solaris, Windows on Intel, Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, and Arm)
- Extremely portable with small and fast binaries.
- Can be called like a C library with no FFI
- Can call C functions with no FFI
*** Projects
- ECL on Android with libsdl for 3d game programming [[https://gitlab.com/dto/ecl-android-games-src]]
- Various people working on general purpose projects. ECL is a full common lisp
- See [[https://common-lisp.net/project/ecl/]]
* Clojure
** Brief History
- Created by Rich Hickey
- Original public release 2007-10-16
- First stable release (1.0) 2009-05-04
- Latest version 1.8
** Backends
- Java, the original and most supported
- Javascript, (clojurescript) official and run by David Nolen
- Various others in various states of support
** Purpose
- See [[http://clojure.org/about/rationale]]
- Basically wanted A lisp for functional programming symbiotic with Java and designed for concurrency.
** Features
- Immutability focused
- Very good java/javascript interop
- All the bells and whistles you'd expect with a modern language
- Functional programming "only" (I consider this an anti-feature personally)
** Projects
- Can you think of it? Someone has probably done it in Clojure
- Heavily used for backend web services so far
- Climate Corporation (our location sponsor) is a heavy user for production
- Walmart, Puppet Labs, Thoughtworks are some big companies using Clojure
- Lot of the cool stuff is in Clojurescript land like Om and Reagent
* Racket Scheme
** Brief History
- Originally PLT Scheme
- First appeared in 1994
- Renamed Racket 2010-06-07
** Features
- Lots and lots of friendly libraries and documentation
- Ships with IDE Dr. Racket
- Lots of learning/teaching resources, especially for kids
- Designed to be very easy to get up and running and make simple programs
- General purpose, does not force you into a particular paradigm
** Projects
- Naughty Dog uses Racket in Uncharted, The Last of Us, etc
- Racket controls a huge telescope in New Mexico
- Arc (see later slides) implemented in Racket
- Watch the Racketcon videos or go to Racketcon for more information!
- Racketcon is right after the STL Strangeloop Conference!
* Guile Scheme
** Brief History
- Began work in 1993
- Originally GEL or GNU Extension Language
- Designed as a spiritual and cleaner successor to Emacs lisp
- Development languished until Andy Wingo took over in 2009/2010
- Guile 2.0 in 2011 revitalized the language with many improvements
- Since 2.0 there have been many incremental improvements to the language
** Features
- Very embed-able, designed for a polyglot environment
- Full featured, lots of batteries included libraries
- Easy to use C API that goes both ways
- Support for writing in other languages that compile to Guile including ecmascript, emacs lisp, and WIP for lua
** Projects
- Mostly GNU projects as it is the official GNU extension language
- Project in progress to replace Emacs Lisp with guile, but community is split
- GNU Guix & GuixSD (cool nix-like package manager and distribution)
- GnuCash
- gEDA
- GDB
- Artanis web framework (pretty new) [[http://web-artanis.com/]]
- Sly game programming framework [[https://dthompson.us/pages/software/sly.html]]
* Chicken Scheme
** Purpose
- Practical and portable
- Wants to bring Scheme out of the academic world and into the industry
- Focus on being simple, fast, and easy to learn
** Features
- Compiles to standard C using the GNU toolchain
- Runs on x86, x86-64, ARM, MIPS, Sparc64, PowerPC, and more
- Well documented in the wiki and manual
- Plenty of libraries and a library manager
- Good FFI
** Projects
- Tehila game engine [[https://wiki.call-cc.org/tehila]]
- Wiki software qwiki [[https://wiki.call-cc.org/egg/qwiki]]
- Really just see [[https://wiki.call-cc.org/Software]]
* Emacs Lisp
** Brief History
- First appeared in 1985
- Based off Maclisp (a now dead lisp dialect)
- Has gradually gained more and more features over the years but no major revisions really
- Considered outdated compared to modern Scheme or Common Lisp
- Some in GNU want to replace with Guile
** Purpose
- Pretty much just for emacs
- Allows easier extensibility than C (which the rest of emacs is written in)
- Definitely NOT designed for general purpose programming
** Projects
- Emacs of course
- Any of the hundreds (thousands?) of emacs packages
- Org mode (this presentation is Org Mode -> Latex + Beamer -> PDF)
- Web servers
- Games
- API glue
- All kinds of fancy IDE features
* Picolisp
** General Notes
- First appeared in 1988 for the Apple Macintosh
- Simplicity and minimalism
- Single internal data type (cell)
- Numbers, symbols, and lists are the ONLY built in data types
- Differs from other lisps in not having lambda, but does not require it
- Integrated database
- "Awesome" C/Java interop
* Shen
** General Notes
- Originally called Qi
- Static types
- Optional laziness
- integrated prolog
- Macros
- Portability
- Runs on top of various languages including SBCL Common Lisp, Clojure, Scheme, Ruby, Python, JVM, Haskell, Javascript.
- Free learning resources are lacking
* Arc
** General notes
- Written by Paul Graham starting in 2001
- Written in Racket Scheme
- See essay [[http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html]]
- Released in 2008
- Designed to be simple
- Seems to have a very small community
- Hackernews ([[https://news.ycombinator.com][news.ycombinator.com]]) is implemented in Arc
* Honorable Mentions
** Lisp Flavored Erlang
- Written by Robert Virding
- Work begin in 2007
- Basically developed just because the author wanted to develop a language on top of erlang and likes lisp
- Author was one of the creators of Erlang
- Provides erlang with meta programming and a feature rich REPL
** Hy
- Also called Hylang
- Written by Paul Tagliamonte
- Introduced at PyCon 2013
- Transparent Lisp front end to Python
- Extreme python interop, since it is basically python
** Pixie
- Heavily inspired by Clojure
- Written by Timothy Baldrige
- Our own Chris Gore has contributed
- First appeared in 2015
- Implemented in RPython and uses PyPy Garbage Collector and tracing JIT
- Basically a clojure dialect with fast startup and native code
- Very young, good for small scripts/programs