I haven't tried it out yet, but I sure had expected a lot more code. Now that is just a connector to an existing C library, but in other cases I was also surprised by the brevity of the code.
Actually I was surprised by the brevity of the code in "Programming Collective Intelligence", too. For the time being, I consider that kind of stuff part of my fun projects, so I decided to do them in Scheme. The upside is that if a library is missing, you get a chance to actually provide it yourself and make a name for yourself in the Open Source world.
Also, I like implementing those algorithms. With another language, there might not be an excuse for implementing the algorithms from the book by yourself, because libraries already exists. With Scheme, I have a justification to implement them myself.
Interfaces to web services might also not be so important, and easy to implement by yourself.
It's not always about algorithms. If you need, say, something that can parse rfc 822 messages, you have to read the rfc, implement it, find out which applications you need to talk to have implemented it incorrectly, and then work around those bugs. Even if you could write the implementation in 2 minutes, you've still got a time consuming task on your hands. Worse, you will probably need to implement more than one library for a medium sized application if you're using an unpopular language, so multipy the time it takes to finish the task above by x.
Sure, but somebody has to make a start, or we will be stuck with Java forever. Maybe you can often use libraries from other languages, too, as in the example of the Cairo lib.
>Sure, but somebody has to make a start, or we will be stuck with Java forever.
True. It's just better to go into it with open eyes.
> Maybe you can often use libraries from other languages, too, as in the example of the Cairo
That helps, but it's still a time consuming task to understand a standard and a C (or whatever) API, design your own API in the 100 year language of your choice, and implement it (and document it if you're really being good). I spent a fair amount binding C libraries for Chicken Scheme (which has a good C FFI) and Scheme48, so I know this from experience.
Comments
I am not very deep into it yet, but my impression is that it is often surprisingly simple to provide lacking libraries for LISP.
As an example, this is an interface to the Cairo graphics library for MzScheme: http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/samth/cairo.plt/...
I haven't tried it out yet, but I sure had expected a lot more code. Now that is just a connector to an existing C library, but in other cases I was also surprised by the brevity of the code.
Actually I was surprised by the brevity of the code in "Programming Collective Intelligence", too. For the time being, I consider that kind of stuff part of my fun projects, so I decided to do them in Scheme. The upside is that if a library is missing, you get a chance to actually provide it yourself and make a name for yourself in the Open Source world.
Also, I like implementing those algorithms. With another language, there might not be an excuse for implementing the algorithms from the book by yourself, because libraries already exists. With Scheme, I have a justification to implement them myself.
Interfaces to web services might also not be so important, and easy to implement by yourself.
It's not always about algorithms. If you need, say, something that can parse rfc 822 messages, you have to read the rfc, implement it, find out which applications you need to talk to have implemented it incorrectly, and then work around those bugs. Even if you could write the implementation in 2 minutes, you've still got a time consuming task on your hands. Worse, you will probably need to implement more than one library for a medium sized application if you're using an unpopular language, so multipy the time it takes to finish the task above by x.
Sure, but somebody has to make a start, or we will be stuck with Java forever. Maybe you can often use libraries from other languages, too, as in the example of the Cairo lib.
>Sure, but somebody has to make a start, or we will be stuck with Java forever.
True. It's just better to go into it with open eyes.
> Maybe you can often use libraries from other languages, too, as in the example of the Cairo
That helps, but it's still a time consuming task to understand a standard and a C (or whatever) API, design your own API in the 100 year language of your choice, and implement it (and document it if you're really being good). I spent a fair amount binding C libraries for Chicken Scheme (which has a good C FFI) and Scheme48, so I know this from experience.
"or we will be stuck with Java forever"
The Scala/Clojure approach makes this a blessing, rather than a curse.
Interesting language, with all the benefits of the JVM and Java libraries. (Which is why these languages are next on my list of languages to learn.)