"Rich Hickey on Clojure" - Personnal Comments


This podcast is an interview with Rich Hickey in which he talks about the programming language Lisp (once again). He starts by introducing the language and its characteristics. I have learned why Lisp different from others languages. The thing that makes Lisp unique as a programming language is that programs are presented to the compiler in forms of data structures. The compiler doesn’t compile text but it compiles data structures.

Why Lisp never got mainstream ? It wasn’t design to be mainstream, more for researchers people solving very hard problems. Today programming is like a social activity, people work together on programs. 

When the compiler is evaluating your program it gives your macros the opportunity to run during the compilation process. That also is a unique feature of the language Lisp.

Ritch Hickey then explains the cooperation of the Lip with the language Java and the simplicity of Lisp. Indeed Lisp is able to access all Java libraries so this doesn’t make Lisp a lonely language.
I like how at the end he explains how Lisp is today getting more spread. People are getting jobs involving Clojure in start ups but also in other areas such as web developing and databases. It is even used in analytics and machine learning via the platform Hadoop.

I am happy that he mentioned this topic because I was wondering where is this language used today. In all of the articles we read until now this topic wasn’t covered. My feeling about this language is changing. I am starting to understand the benefits of it and why it is such a powerful language. It is also interesting how Lisp and Clojure are regaining attractivity today after many years. I will conclude by saying that this podcast was quite interesting and I enjoyed listening to it.


Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

"Language as the Ultimate Weapon in Nineteen Eighty-Four" - Personnal Comments

The article “Language as the Ultimate Weapon” written by Jem Berkes basically analyses Orwell’s novel called “Nineteen Eighty-Four” about the use of the language and the impact this one can have on a society. In Orwell’s novel « Nineteen Eighty-Four”, the Party is trying to completely replace the common language of that time that is called Oldspeak by a new one called Newspeak. This new language aims to erase thoughtcrime. Through all his novel, Orwell shows how the media can use the language to mask the truth.  It is a novel that is all about psychological control of the public. The Party is interested in masking the truth by lies and propaganda. The most obvious example is the media that refers to different Ministries of Truth and Love for example but the first one often falsifies records which is an illegal activity. In my opinion Orwell’s novel is relevant to a student taking the Programming Language course because it shows the importance of the use of a language in
Lire la suite

"Revenge of the Nerd" - Personnal Comments

This article was written by Paul Graham in the year 2002. It deals with the differences between programming languages and especially the importance to chose the correct language when writing a new software or solving a problem.  Once again, the language Lisp is defended. It is said that programmers can write much faster in Lisp than other languages such as C. From a competitive point of view it is true that it is an advantage for a company to have Lisp programmers if they can write software and deliver it two or three times faster than other programmers.  But if Lisp is such a good language, why isn’t it still widely used ? I have looked for an internship 6 months ago and I have never came across an offer that asked for some Lisp skills. The picture that the author uses to describe a random IT manager that is afraid to take “cutting-edge” decisions is quite good. I think he is right. It can be dangerous to take risks because if a project fails it can have huge financial i
Lire la suite