Lisp's Influence on Ruby

6 comments

• evw 11 minutes ago
  For folks that want all of this plus macros (and a lot of other great things), check out Elixir.
• danlitt 45 minutes ago
  > He’s described Ruby’s design as starting from a simple Lisp, stripping out macros and s-expressions

  Put the macros back! It would be so cool!
• dismalaf 50 minutes ago
  I love Ruby, use it for most of my projects that don't require performance.

  Nothing I would love more than a Ruby with a Common-Lisp like compiler and runtime. Unboxed types, native compilation, partial compilation, live image (Ruby has this but "faster Rubies" like Crystal don't), etc...

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  • rjsw 44 minutes ago
    ... or just use Common Lisp.
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    • dismalaf 36 minutes ago
      Which is what I do. One can dream though right? Of a world where Ruby stayed just a tad more Lisp-y and less Perl/C/Smalltalk/Unix-y.

      Also I'm working on a DSL/Macros that give me more Ruby-esque quality of life things in Lisp.
• pjmlp 1 hour ago
  That is actually Lisp influence on Smalltalk, and Perl, that eventually influenced Ruby.
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  • 0xpgm 1 hour ago
    From the article

    > Matz has said as much. He’s described Ruby’s design as starting from a simple Lisp, stripping out macros and s-expressions, then adding an object system, blocks, and Smalltalk-style methods. The features most Rubyists fall in love with aren’t the object-oriented ones. They’re the functional ones, dressed in friendlier clothes.

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    • wglb 1 hour ago
      But macros and s-expressions are two of my favorites parts of lisp!
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      • dismalaf 1 hour ago
        Funny enough Lisp was originally meant to be written in a higher level syntax (with infix operators and everything).

        But yeah, macros and S-expressions make it easier to write your own DSLs.
  • Smalltalker-80 1 hour ago
    Totalle agree, I just googled it: "Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto heavily credits Smalltalk as the deepest structural inspiration behind Ruby’s object model. He combined Smalltalk’s beautiful object-oriented architecture and message-passing system with features from other languages to create a tool designed primarily for developer happiness." Including the closures and collection operations.
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    • riffraff 42 minutes ago
      "Some may say Ruby is a bad rip-off of Lisp or Smalltalk, and I admit that. But it is nicer to ordinary people."

      (Matz speaking at the LL2 conference some 20+ years ago)
  • dragonwriter 1 hour ago
    No, its actual influence from Lisp-family languages (including Scheme). Yes, Lisp also influenced Perl and Smalltalk, but Matz was not ignorant of Lisp with the only influence om Ruby from Lisp being indirect through those other languages.
• DonHopkins 1 hour ago
  What have the Lisps ever done for us?

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

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  • BoingBoomTschak 3 minutes ago
    Always fun to remind grugs that LISP invented "if" and GC.
• tug2024 1 hour ago
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