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Well, actually Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp were derived from the same language and share a lot. CL-USER> (defun fact (n) (do* ((i n (- i 1)) (j i (* j i)))

by lispm 11y ago

Well, actually Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp were derived from the same language and share a lot. CL-USER> (defun fact (n) (do* ((i n (- i 1)) (j i (* j i))) ((= i 1) j))) FACT CL-USER> (fact 15) 1307674368000 Unchanged code in Elisp... ELISP> (defun fact (n) (do* ((i n (- i 1)) (j i (* j i))) ((= i 1) j))) fact ELISP> (fact 15) 1307674368000 (#o23016735654000, #x13077775800) Elisp originally was designed as a Maclisp subset. Common Lisp was designed as a Maclisp successor.

taeric 11y ago
Fair. There have been, and always will be lisps that can be copy pasted between each other. Just as you can get some implementations of programs in some assemblies that work between assemblies. That does not say anything about whether or not a language is an assembly. Just as this says nothing about whether a language is a lisp.
- lispm 11y ago
  A family is a social construct. It's about sharing, communicating, learning, building, inheritance. Emacs Lisp is directly in the tradition of McCarthy's Lisp. It shares names, concepts, literature, even code. Logo, Dylan, ML, Clojure don't. They were derived or inspired by Lisp, but they are now they own language family...
  - 59nadir 11y ago
    You're bunching Clojure in with several languages that have strayed far further from Lisp. Clojure was designed specifically with the intent of being a dialect of Lisp, which means it's explicitly not in its own language family or in any other language family than Lisp.
    - lispm 11y ago
      > Clojure was designed specifically with the intent of being a dialect of Lisp The result of that design is that Clojure shares literally zero lines of code with other Lisps: Autolisp, ISLisp, Emacs Lisp, Standard Lisp, Common Lisp. Many basic concepts are absent, renamed or redesigned ('Atom', 'Linked List', ...). Clojure is fully incompatible to any other language with Lisp in its name. Programs have to be re-architectured, because the concepts are different: no TCO, but 'functional', different approach about side effects (-> avoid), lazy persistent datastructure at its core, different idea of OOP (-> avoid), Lisp infrastructure (-> avoid), ... There is no software I know of, which is shared. The number of tools shared is 'one': GNU Emacs. It's a different community with different goals, different software, different applications, different libraries. Just think of it: zero lines of code is shared. My problem with that broader idea of 'Lisp': it is fully vague and it has no practical implications. Sometimes it's only a marketing slogan. It has the same vague meaning like 'object-oriented' or 'Functional'. There is no consensus what OOP in a broad sense means and how it should be defined. 'Lisp' is just as useless. It does not mean that Clojure is useless or worse than Lisp. Totally not. Clojure has new ideas on data structures put to work and enabled some very productive people enjoying their tools. They are doing wonderful stuff.
      - yxhuvud 11y ago
        Would you consider Scheme a lisp? It is after all also not sharing any code with the above mentioned (by necessity, since it use define instead of defun for declaring functions).
        agumonkey 11y ago
        Same about racket. Is it a scheme, even a lisp ? I understand a bit more why they changed their name from PLT scheme to racket now.
      - 59nadir 11y ago
        > The result of that design is that Clojure shares literally zero lines of code with other Lisps: Autolisp, ISLisp, Emacs Lisp, Standard Lisp, Common Lisp. Many basic concepts are absent, renamed or redesigned ('Atom', 'Linked List', ...). Clojure is fully incompatible to any other language with Lisp in its name. > Programs have to be re-architectured, because the concepts are different: "Re-architectured" can be read in a multitude of ways. Changing a few datatypes because Clojure prefers vectors instead of lists, etc., feels like it falls well below the bar for "re-architectured". > no TCO, but 'functional' This would hold weight if CL mandated TCO, but it doesn't. With this in mind, I'd like to examine a few of your points from a different angle: Racket: - Basic concepts are the same, (atom, linked lists, '...') - Restructuring not really needed (up for debate, depends entirely on your prefered initial design choices in either language. Racket isn't that opinionated.) - Tail call optimization required as per Scheme standard, so is present. Note that this is not actually something Lisp mandates. - Doesn't 'care' about side effects, community is pragmatic and will generally advise you to do whatever is practical - Has an object oriented sub-language with message passing and so on There are a lot of points here that, according to you, makes Racket essentially a Lisp, even your non-point about TCO. I'm curious to know what you feel about people saying Scheme is a Lisp, considering the above. The whole debate of "Is X (a) Lisp?" reminds me of nationality debates that essentially boil down to some people saying blood is more important than culture. You seem to be taking both sides, however; arguing culture and blood (source code). You cherry pick the cultural differences like most people standing on one side of the nationality debate would and argue that just those specific differences are the most important. That's the thing, though; Swedish people could argue however much they want that they're very different from Norwegian people. To the rest of the world, though, they're essentially the same. Especially when you start comparing them to people from Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, and so on. When you're in the bubble the very small differences are much bigger to you, but if you zoom out to get some perspective these differences are much smaller than the commonalities.

by lispm 11y ago

taeric 11y ago

Fair. There have been, and always will be lisps that can be copy pasted between each other. Just as you can get some implementations of programs in some assemblies that work between assemblies. That does not say anything about whether or not a language is an assembly. Just as this says nothing about whether a language is a lisp.

lispm 11y ago
A family is a social construct. It's about sharing, communicating, learning, building, inheritance. Emacs Lisp is directly in the tradition of McCarthy's Lisp. It shares names, concepts, literature, even code. Logo, Dylan, ML, Clojure don't. They were derived or inspired by Lisp, but they are now they own language family...
- 59nadir 11y ago
  You're bunching Clojure in with several languages that have strayed far further from Lisp. Clojure was designed specifically with the intent of being a dialect of Lisp, which means it's explicitly not in its own language family or in any other language family than Lisp.
  - lispm 11y ago
    > Clojure was designed specifically with the intent of being a dialect of Lisp The result of that design is that Clojure shares literally zero lines of code with other Lisps: Autolisp, ISLisp, Emacs Lisp, Standard Lisp, Common Lisp. Many basic concepts are absent, renamed or redesigned ('Atom', 'Linked List', ...). Clojure is fully incompatible to any other language with Lisp in its name. Programs have to be re-architectured, because the concepts are different: no TCO, but 'functional', different approach about side effects (-> avoid), lazy persistent datastructure at its core, different idea of OOP (-> avoid), Lisp infrastructure (-> avoid), ... There is no software I know of, which is shared. The number of tools shared is 'one': GNU Emacs. It's a different community with different goals, different software, different applications, different libraries. Just think of it: zero lines of code is shared. My problem with that broader idea of 'Lisp': it is fully vague and it has no practical implications. Sometimes it's only a marketing slogan. It has the same vague meaning like 'object-oriented' or 'Functional'. There is no consensus what OOP in a broad sense means and how it should be defined. 'Lisp' is just as useless. It does not mean that Clojure is useless or worse than Lisp. Totally not. Clojure has new ideas on data structures put to work and enabled some very productive people enjoying their tools. They are doing wonderful stuff.
    - yxhuvud 11y ago
      Would you consider Scheme a lisp? It is after all also not sharing any code with the above mentioned (by necessity, since it use define instead of defun for declaring functions).
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        Same about racket. Is it a scheme, even a lisp ? I understand a bit more why they changed their name from PLT scheme to racket now.
    - 59nadir 11y ago
      > The result of that design is that Clojure shares literally zero lines of code with other Lisps: Autolisp, ISLisp, Emacs Lisp, Standard Lisp, Common Lisp. Many basic concepts are absent, renamed or redesigned ('Atom', 'Linked List', ...). Clojure is fully incompatible to any other language with Lisp in its name. > Programs have to be re-architectured, because the concepts are different: "Re-architectured" can be read in a multitude of ways. Changing a few datatypes because Clojure prefers vectors instead of lists, etc., feels like it falls well below the bar for "re-architectured". > no TCO, but 'functional' This would hold weight if CL mandated TCO, but it doesn't. With this in mind, I'd like to examine a few of your points from a different angle: Racket: - Basic concepts are the same, (atom, linked lists, '...') - Restructuring not really needed (up for debate, depends entirely on your prefered initial design choices in either language. Racket isn't that opinionated.) - Tail call optimization required as per Scheme standard, so is present. Note that this is not actually something Lisp mandates. - Doesn't 'care' about side effects, community is pragmatic and will generally advise you to do whatever is practical - Has an object oriented sub-language with message passing and so on There are a lot of points here that, according to you, makes Racket essentially a Lisp, even your non-point about TCO. I'm curious to know what you feel about people saying Scheme is a Lisp, considering the above. The whole debate of "Is X (a) Lisp?" reminds me of nationality debates that essentially boil down to some people saying blood is more important than culture. You seem to be taking both sides, however; arguing culture and blood (source code). You cherry pick the cultural differences like most people standing on one side of the nationality debate would and argue that just those specific differences are the most important. That's the thing, though; Swedish people could argue however much they want that they're very different from Norwegian people. To the rest of the world, though, they're essentially the same. Especially when you start comparing them to people from Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, and so on. When you're in the bubble the very small differences are much bigger to you, but if you zoom out to get some perspective these differences are much smaller than the commonalities.