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And your definition of what makes a Lisp is pretty strange. For one thing, Racket and Scheme are definitely in the lisp family.
by qwertyuiop924 10y ago
And your definition of what makes a Lisp is pretty strange. For one thing, Racket and Scheme are definitely in the lisp family.
- lispm 10y agoIt's not my definition. I just happen to agree with a lot of others, many who don't post here. It's also not new. I just remind people of a view, you might never heard of, because you never were involved in Lisp meetings, Lisp conferences or Lisp standardization efforts. Lisp is old, and many younger people don't know much of its history and evolution. See for example Pitman, Lambda the ultimate political party http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html Published in Lisp Pointers (a regular Lisp magazine, published in the 80s/90s) in 1994. > Lisp users are accustomed to being able to write programs that take program texts in different dialects (or older versions of the same dialect) and process them to bring them up to date. No single common linguistic feature supports this. And yet, Lisp users are accustomed to expecting that there will be some way to accommodate the needs of compatibility and translation. That's is what makes Lisp, in my opinion. Sharing of code, implementations, libraries, books, tools, ... A language spectrum serves a diverse community. It is not a dead body of abstract and vague principles. It grows out of sharing and communication. Kent knows the Lisp and Scheme landscape very well. He worked as developer, in standardisation efforts (both Lisp and Scheme), as an implementor, editor, author, etc.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoI read Pittman. The thing is, the Scheme community may not be able to share code directly, but we are able to, and often do, share ideas. In addition, many Schemers are active in the CL community and vice versa, like Pittman. Many of the same people were involved in the standardization effort, and the creation of both. A language spectrum does indeed serve as a diverse commiunity. One us Schemers are a part of. I know my history, I just disagree with you.
- lispm 10y agoHis name is Pitman. Kent Pitman. > Many of the same people were involved in the standardization effort, and the creation of both. I doubt that this is the case for R7RS. > The thing is, the Scheme community may not be able to share code directly, but we are able to, and often do, share ideas. That's my point. There are few ideas shared and no code. Today the various spinoffs of Lisp have their own communities. I don't say that it is bad or good, it's just the way it is. That's not only the fate of a programming language family, it also happens in other areas, that domains are divided into groups which have problems to understand each other and which are not able to track or use the work of other groups. The groups have different preferences and their topic gets an independent life.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoSorry. I always get names wrong. As for r7rs, Sussman, at the very least, was on the commitee. Several other Lispers as well, IIRC, but it would take too long to check. All the Lisps have different communities. That's why the languages are different. There's some overlap, but if the communities were identical than all the languages would be the same. But then, you could say the same of C, C++, and Java, which don't all share code, but are all in the same family.
- lispm 10y agoSussman is a Schemer.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoTo be fair, he's done some lisp work. But that's true enough. Steele was on the commitee for many years, although not this one. I'd give you a list of CLers on the commitee, but I honestly can't dig through 12 people's online profiles just to prove a point right now.
- imagist 10y agoI still don't see anything here which indicates to me that I should give a shit about NewLisp being called "NewLisp", or about referring to CL/Scheme/Racket/whatever as "Lisps".