| Maciej Katafiasz 2008-01-29, 4:56 am |
| Den Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:39:30 -0600 skrev Blake McBride:
> In conclusion, Scheme has, IMO, many important shortcomings. I
> understand that I don't set the standards and these are just basically
> my opinions.
Which you have argued for quite well, but...
> Common Lisp, again IMO, did a lot of the right things. The one big
> technical error (IMO) was the LISPn thing. I know a bunch of you guys
> want to jump on me about this with all kinds of technical BS trying to
> rationalize your view.
C'mon, now, you really *do* want to get bashed, don't you? How else do
you expect to have a technical discussion where some kind of "real truth"
is established if the first thing you do is to call bullshit on anyone
who isn't you?
> The truth of the matter is that the highest and
> most respected experts on Common Lisp are utterly unclear about the
> issue. So how does that make you an expert? You are more of a fan club
> than a technical expert (again read the articles from the authors of
> Common Lisp).
Oh, I see, so in essence you're saying that:
1) Anyone who posts here is not an expert (sorry, Kent), although you
leave the notion of "experts" ill-specified, really
2) Anyone but experts is by definition unable to have an informed opinion
and only allowed to have bullshit fanboy views?
From 1) and 2), using my amazing powers of logic, I can infer that your
opinions have no merit and are just a bunch of fanboy crap.
> The real truth is that the number one reason Common Lisp
> is LISPn rather than LISP1 is historical and for purposes of backward
> compatibility (all of which is hardly applicable anymore). It isn't
> technically better. The experts were able to point out trade-offs with
> either design. They even stated that LISP1 encouraged more elegant
> programming style.
>
> I would bet that the number one reason so many people use Scheme instead
> of Common Lisp is the LISP1 reason. It is Scheme's biggest appeal. (My
> guess is that Common Lisp is more popular than Scheme. I am just trying
> to explain the large number of Scheme users.)
I would bet that in "formative years" the issue is just not important at
all for choosing, I doubt most people are even aware of the Lisp-arity
issue until they are reasonably proficient in at least one of the
dialects. I for one had used a number of languages (all of them unary, of
course) before Lisp, and never had to do with any Lisp-1 (I started with
Elisp), and I was unaware of the distinction for a number of years. But
when I learnt about the double namespaces in Elisp, I immediately thought
it really neat and elegant, so I'd seriously challenge your claim that
somehow any sane thinking individual has to prefer Lisp-1 unless they had
prior indoctrination.
Cheers,
Maciej
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