Back from the past

June 22, 2022 The Editorial Board- Teamware Solutions

Common Lisp

We will get right to the topic; modern day programming has lot to thank for their predecessors. These days languages and programmers who use those languages have far greater flux than what languages had in early dawn days of programming.

Lisp is one such language which has seen the dawn, and noon all of the day. It has been a tool that most students of computer science must have grasped; well grasped strong through the years of education. We hope this is still taught. However, when then land in a job it is all lost. The principles apply but the language is lost.

Programming for profit and for business involves completely different technology stack. This is talked a lot in different platforms as gap between education and business. To address that gap most often the curriculum gets changed and often business does not take that critical step to stay close to what is taught. Do take cognisance of the number of frameworks that have sprouted and probably many have been already abandoned.

Lisp has seen those phases and fortunately have survived for this dispatch to mention it.

What can you build with Lisp

Everything! Is the simplest answer. But then you ask; Is there an ecosystem that accelerates you to run faster? Like npm, nuget, maven. Well there is but not that much to talk about. That dear programmers is the one common reason why it is not commonly used language in business. If we could say one thing and do not expand upon the reasons for it to be safe; it is language for programmers not for developers, not yet.

You can write web server, do systems programming, make Lisp play in tandem with C, C++, Java etc. So now you see the possibilities. One of the sad reality that is buried deep down the internet’s past is – Lisp is the go-to language for Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately budding developers will spend time learning Python.

Burying the sentiments

   (defun pattern-matcher (pattern input &optional (bindings no-bindings))

     “Match pattern against input in the context of the bindings”

     (cond ((eq bindings fail-to-match) fail-to-match)

       ((variable-pattern pattern)

         (match-variable pattern input bindings))

       ((equal pattern input) bindings)

       ((segment-pattern-p pattern)

         (segment-matcher pattern input bindings))

       ((single-pattern-p pattern)

         (single-matcher pattern input bindings))

       ((and (consp pattern) (consp input))

         (pattern-matcher (rest pattern) (rest input)

               (pattern-matcher (first pattern) (first input)

                   bindings)))

       (t fail-to-match)))

You will have some idea about what the above program does even before we start laying out the language constructs. Such is the power of expressing thoughts via Lisp.

Language constructs

Lisp i.e. List Processing is one such rare language which has very few rules and construct for you to remember. Thus, was aeasy target for academia to use it in teaching. Following are the rules

Comments

One of the most important thing one must understand while starting language is comments. As you read and obviously write more programs you will write comments. It is important that you identify them quickly plus it is not hard to remember them as well –

   ;; Comment that is written within 1 line

   #| Comment that is

   #| across multiple lines

Functions

Lisp works with macros, thus functions are defined using a macro – `deffun`

   ( deffun <function name> ( <parameters> ) )

That is all you need to know while defining functions. They are called using a syntax

   (funcall #'<function name> <parameters>)

    or

    (apply #'<function name>(<parameters>))

Needless to say parameters are comma separated. Function name can have hyphens to separate words.

Variables

They are lexically scoped as in many other languages that you are aware of. Two types of variables are commonly used in Lisp – Local and Global.

   ; local variable declaration

   let ((pi 3.14))

   ; another example of local variable

   let* ((pi 3.14), ((area-of-circle (*, pi, (^, radius,2) ) ) ) )

   ; global variable declaration

   (defparameter *life* “Circle of life”)

   ; another approach to declare global variable is

   (defvar *life*)

   (let (*life* “Full of fun”) )

By no means we are limiting the language to just this. There is more, control statements, class, methods, generics, macros etc. But here is the thing – All use the same principles described above. You might have noticed the similarity already

( something ( something ) )

The language uses only 1 type of bracket; rounded bracket. Then there is an operation, it could be a call to macro or definition of function or class etc with its name. Then again the rounded bracket with more parameters or chaining of further operation. Psst; closures!.

We conclude this dispatch here and will continue to voice over the rant we had while burying the sentiments for the next dispatch.