Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?

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#1184

From: Didier Verna
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:18

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Tim Harig <usernet@ilthio.net> wrote:

> What hurts the LISP community far more is the zealotry of its members,
> their insistance that LISP is the *only* tool for *every* job, and
> their agressiveness in trying to push it off on to everybody else --
> whether everybody else happens want it or not. Whether this is
> indicitive of the entire community or simply the result of those most
> apparent, I cannot say; but, it leads to the overall impression that
> the LISP community is narrowminded and neophobic. Who would want to be
> part of such a community?

  Not sure which lispers you've been talking to. I don't see any more
zealotry in the Lisp community than in any other one. I see, however,
things like Racket in which Lispers put a lot of efforts learning about
the cool stuff that comes from other languages and incorporating them
into their Lisp dialect (static typing, contracts, to name a few). Is
that narrowminded? Is it wrong to try to improve your preferred language
instead of switching to another one? These are the Lispers you should
talk to.

About the "*only* tool for *every* job" thing, there is often a
confusion between Lisp -- The Idea, and Lisp -- The Language(s). Lispers
usually like Lisp for its extreme customizability, something that is
closely related to Lisp -- The Idea (code is data, structural
reflexivity, the Lisp macros etc.). However, no programming language is
perfect, not even Lisp -- The Language(s). Common Lisp is far from
perfect, it's not perfect to have a gazillion Scheme dialects, let alone
Emacs Lisp.

The other thing that puzzles me is why you would be annoyed by people
trying to "push it off" on you. Maybe (just maybe ;-) I would try to
push off Lisp -- The Idea on you, but I wouldn't dare to try to push off
*any* language on you, because I don't know your background, your needs,
your interests etc. If somebody does that on me, I just ignore them.

-- 
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.

Scientific site:   http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier
Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com

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From: Didier Verna <didier@lrde.epita.fr>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional,comp.lang.lisp,gnu.emacs.help
Subject: Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?
Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:18:51 +0100
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