On: Lisp Wins (Steve Yegge article)

[schtog]

this is not true is it? there must be a way to make this shorter, otherways that is completely ridiculous.

"""" The equivalent code in Java, as reasonably compressed as I could make it, is:

import java.util.;

public class Fugger { public static void main ( String[] args ) {

    List numbers = new ArrayList();
    for ( int i = 0; i < 5; i++ ) {
      numbers.add ( new Integer(i) );
    }

    List squares = new ArrayList();
    Iterator it = numbers.iterator();
    while ( it.hasNext() ) {
      int i = ((Integer)it.next()).intValue();
      squares.add ( new Integer(i * i) );
    }

    Iterator i2 = squares.iterator();
    while ( i2.hasNext() ) {
      int i = ((Integer)i2.next()).intValue();
      System.out.print ( i );
      if ( i2.hasNext() ) {
	System.out.print ( " " );
      }
    }

    System.out.println();
  }

} """"

and his example in python: ' '.join([`x x` for x in range(1, 6)])

rofl...

[smanek → schtog]

Interestingly, the author didn't show that program in lisp ... which do you think is better style:

(mapc #'(lambda (x) (print (expt x 2))) (list 1 2 3 4 5))

or

(loop for i from 1 upto 5 do (print (expt i 2)))

interestingly, they are both longer than python/perl ...

Not to turn this into a game of Golf, but is there any shorter way?

[ken → smanek]

If you just want to print the same output, you can be ever so slightly shorter than his Perl/Python:

(dotimes (i 5) (print (expt (1+ i) 2)))

This doesn't follow his semantic steps, so it's kind of cheating, though in a real program I have a bunch of utility functions to help me out so it's about the same:

(join " " (mapcar #'sq (range 1 5)))

I think the point is not that Lisp is shorter for any given toy problem, but that Lisp allows you to build such abstractions. Even if you had join() and range() and sq() in Java, what's Java for (f x (mapcar #'g (h y z)))?

[brlewis → smanek]

Scheme:

  (define nums '(1 2 3 4 5))
  (write (map * nums nums))

[watmough → smanek]

Clojure:

  user=> (map #(* % %) (range 1 6))
  (1 4 9 16 25)
  user=>

[Darmani → smanek]

Arc:

(pr (map [* _ _] (range 1 5)))

[donw → schtog]

Yeah, I got the opinion that he was taking the mickey on that one.