Julia: to Lisp or not to Lisp?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as a brilliant talk on Julia's design and how it is or isn't a Lisp.
What it is
Stefan Karpinski's European Lisp Symposium 2016 talk asks whether Julia is a Lisp. He covers the features it borrows from Lisp, such as macros and closures, and where it departs, including syntax and its type system, with generated machine code shown.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2016 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec Flow · 2016-05 · on “European Lisp Symposium 2016”
Ah, the Julia talk ( [this video] ) was just great. Showing the generated machine code is so hackerish yet so rare these days. :-/
Strong rec e12e · 2016-06 · on “Nim Programming Language 0.14.0 released”
This reminded me of the recent brilliant talk about design of Julia: "Julia: to lisp or not to lisp?" [this video]
Recommends krzychukula · 2016-05 · on “European Lisp Symposium 2016”
Best talks in my opinion: * [LINK] * [this video] Notable mentions: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] I liked OpenGL lightning talk as well: * [LINK]
Recommends e12e · 2016-07 · on “Why is Python slow”
From the linked [lwn] article: "Another example he gave demonstrates the slowness of the C runtime: import itertools sum(itertools.repeat(1.0, 100000000)) That will calculate the sum of 100 million 1.0s. But it is six times slower than the equivalent JavaScript loop. Float addition is fast, as is sum(), but the result is not. Larry Hastings asked what it was that was slowing everything down. Modzelewski replied that it is the boxing of the numbers, which requires allocations for creating objects. Though an audience member did point out with a chuckle that you can increase the number of iterations and Python will still give the right answer, while JavaScript will not." Reminded me about the e
Recommends e12e · 2016-11 · on “A Look at How Traders and Economists Are Using the Julia Programming Language”
Speaking of talks on Julia, I'll again recommend: [this video] "Julia: to Lisp or not to Lisp?" from the European Lisp Symposium in May 2016. I found it was rather illuminating on Julia in particular and lisps and programming languages in general.
Recommends e12e · 2017-03 · on “Some fun with π in Julia”
I'm not sure if "special language" is a particularly apt description of what Julia is. SQL is a "special" language. At any rate - a lisp-like language with llvm backend, package manager, and a (small, but not trivial) group of users writing real software - what's not to like? I (still) recommend the talk: "Julia - to lisp or not to lisp?", that gives a quick overview of some of the design choices: [this video] For me, I like that it has a real story trying to balance "actual integer math" (not this silly machine constrained twos-compliment hack" and "you could conceivably write a ray tracer that wasn't unusably slow" :)
Recommends e12e · 2018-05 · on “Common Lisp homepage”
You might also want to have a look at Julia. It's not really a lisp, but it sits on top of a scheme - and it has a rather interesting, pragmatic type system: "Julia: to lisp or not to lisp?": [this video] [LINK] Maybe compare and contrast with Maxima?: [LINK]
Recommends e12e · 2018-11 · on “Chicken Scheme 5.0”
I'm a great admirer of Julia, but I doubt it would appeal to those seeking a "true" lisp/scheme. Even if it's has a sane macro system, and much of the same power. You can indeed see s-expressions (search for "s-expression") : [LINK] This nice talk mentions a bit on how Julia is (not) a lisp (if I recall correctly): "Julia: to Lisp or not to Lisp?": [this video] This might also be of interest: [LINK] As well as (maybe) clasp: [LINK]