Lambda the Ultimate

inactiveTopic Identity crisis
started 5/23/2003; 1:33:30 AM - last post 5/25/2003; 6:08:51 AM
Ehud Lamm - Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 1:33:30 AM (reads: 1519, responses: 14)
Identity crisis
I noticed that several people linking to LtU from their blogrolls comment that LtU is a "lisp flavored" weblog. If this is really the case, it simply means that some prominent members like Lisp. This can (and did) change over time.

I teach Ada and Scheme (EOPL2), other contributing editors are C++ and Java mavens. A vocal minority consists of Haskell fanatics (see our functional programming department). We even had lively Smalltalk inspired discussions. It may be true that programming language fanatics often like Scheme/Lisp and are excited by languages that are not in the mainstream, but LtU is not just for fanatics (though we tend to be more vocal than anyone else).

What unites LtU readers, if anything, if that we appreicate this diversity. We try to keep an open mind, and to discuss the differences between the various languages, paradigms and techniques carefully and unemotionally. Most of the time we even succeed.

If you think LtU is biassed, you can easily fix the problem by signing up to become a contributing editor.

I think there's a lesson here to be learned about programming language communties, and about our own little sanctuary. What do you think?


Posted to admin by Ehud Lamm on 5/23/03; 1:39:55 AM

Oskar Kohonen - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 2:51:29 AM (reads: 1065, responses: 3)
Probably has a lot to do with the name. I would tend to think that anything with the word "lambda" in it would be lisp flavored. I've never heard anyone mention lambda calculus when discussing OOP/procedural/logic programming for obvious reasons.

Frank Atanassow - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 5:16:06 AM (reads: 1034, responses: 1)
I'm not very happy with the label Haskell `fanatic'.

Matt Hellige - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 7:39:22 AM (reads: 1021, responses: 1)
I've never heard anyone mention lambda calculus when discussing OOP/procedural/logic programming for obvious reasons.

Not so obvious... ;) You should look at "A Theory of Objects" by Martin Abadi and Luca Cardelli.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 7:53:50 AM (reads: 1014, responses: 0)
I didn't mean to offend anyone, so I apologize. But Frank, what gave you the idea that I was referring to you?

Ehud Lamm - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 7:58:08 AM (reads: 1013, responses: 0)
Lambda calculus (LC) has a central role in programming language theory.

Frank Atanassow - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 8:02:40 AM (reads: 983, responses: 2)
I didn't mean to offend anyone, so I apologize.

I'm not offended, just disappointed. I feel that I have always made objective arguments for Haskell's way of doing things, and fanatics are not known for their objectivity. If I come across as a fanatic, I must be doing something wrong.

But Frank, what gave you the idea that I was referring to you?

Who else could it be? I am the most vocal advocate of Haskell here, though I recognize that there are also other Haskell users and fans on LtU.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 8:20:13 AM (reads: 1002, responses: 0)
Frank, I tried to be funny in my original post, which is why I referred to myself as a PL fanatic ("but LtU is not just for fanatics (though we tend to be more vocal than anyone else)").

I really should have used the word "fan" and not "fanatic."

The main point in my original post, if any, was "We try to keep an open mind, and to discuss the differences between the various languages, paradigms and techniques carefully and unemotionally."

I certainly think you contributions are informative and helpful.

By the way, I am a newbie Haskell fan(atic) myself. I am not that vocal about it since I am very much aware of the fact that I am far from being a Haskell expert.

David B. Wildgoose - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 8:31:23 AM (reads: 959, responses: 0)
Frank, there are other Haskell fans on this site. Don't be touchy! (And by the way, I do find your posts informative - keep up the good work).

For what it's worth, I discovered this site when doing a Web Search for "Lambda Calculus" when I had just started learning Haskell. At the time I had the impression that the site was primarily about functional programming languages in general, but I now know better - even if it usually Ehud waxing lyrical about Ada. :-)

andrew cooke - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 8:36:48 AM (reads: 992, responses: 0)
I have always made objective arguments for Haskell's way of doing things

you have criticised it sometimes, too.

i think maybe there's a communication problem here. fanatic need not mean you are a crazed maniac - it can be used in casual conversation to mean little more than that someone believes a certain subject important (and i think it's fair to say that you think type theory is an important part of language design!).

alternatively, consider yourself "collateral damage". even innocents suffer in wars - especially religious wars - and sometimes the "typing debate" seems to be a religious war. i suspect that the dynamic army use perl for encrypted communications, while the static army throw meaningless words into their communications, causing runtime errors in the opponent's parsers...

Chad Slaughter - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 10:13:50 AM (reads: 917, responses: 0)
Curious. I describe LtU as a programming language site but if pushed I will mention specific langues: Ada, Haskell, functional as being talked about more than others. But Lisp? When was the last Lisp article anyways?

Maybe its the whole idea of PL theory is associated with functional languages which is associated with Lisp. I'm just grasping as straws to understand the claim of this being a lisp site.

I don't like people to think I associate with languages like that. I prefer the more respectable ones. :)

Paul Snively - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 11:59:06 AM (reads: 898, responses: 0)
Color me a functional fanatic, and happily so. And the only reason that I don't qualify as a Haskell fanatic is that I haven't yet learned the language. I did go so far as to download the Hugs sources, only to find that MacHugs hadn't yet been Carbonized! I didn't wish to have to run Terminal just to run (plain ol' UNIX) hugs, so I Carbonized MacHugs. If any Mac users want, I can send it along.

water - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 12:31:10 PM (reads: 891, responses: 0)
Hey, it's obvious if you remember the motivation for the website's title.

Oskar Kohonen - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/23/2003; 2:01:16 PM (reads: 932, responses: 0)
Not so obvious... ;) You should look at "A Theory of Objects" by Martin Abadi and Luca Cardelli.
Well, I might have been overgeneralising. I merely meant to say that mostly people who talk about lambda calculus or programming language theory tend to prefer functional languages. I might be wrong, this is just my intuition. For instance if someone has a blog about OOP I would be very surprised if it had "lambda" in its name.

Thanks for the book tip I'll check it out.

Daniel Marlay - Re: Identity crisis  blueArrow
5/25/2003; 6:08:51 AM (reads: 721, responses: 0)

Coming out of lurkdom for an AOL

Actually two of the things that quite amaze me about Lambda the Ultimate as a forum is that it manages to:

  1. Have such a high signal to noise ratio, and
  2. Be as language neutral as it is.

I'm not sure that I know of anyone who I would describe as "language neutral", I guess there are people who are more open minded with respect to programming languages than others. However, in pretty much all the other online forums that I've visited, people seem to be unable to have rational discussions about language features, advantages, disadvantages and all the rest.

So, in summary, thanks Ehud for setting this up and thanks to all the active posters who make this weblog so interesting to read. I've been stimulated to learn about languages I wouldn't have thought to investigate before (Haskell (I'm still trying to get monads entirely sorted out in my head), Ada to name just two).