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Lastly one wonders why we don't go calling all these C-like languages ALGOLs. We sometimes do though, don't we? Not that terminology, but I often see the peopl

Lastly one wonders why we don't go calling all these C-like languages ALGOLs. We sometimes do though, don't we? Not that terminology, but I often see the people talking about "curly brace languages" or "C/C++/Java/C#".

Jach 9y ago
Sure, we see there's a grouping, and might identify it when trying to create a cluster, but it's not as pervasive as the Lisp Family meme. When Clojure came out, it was advertised as "a Lisp" (not "Lisp", but "a Lisp"). When Go came out, it wasn't advertised as "an ALGOL", or "a curly brace language". What makes so many programmers want to associate only good qualities with this floaty abstraction of "Lisp" (that isn't simply Common Lisp) such that the arguments over how Lispy Clojure/Scheme/EmacsLisp/whatever inevitably keep happening, such that things can advertise as "a Lisp" and get attention despite not having some pretty core Common Lisp functionality? The only other language I see something similar to that is with Python. Go programmers say it's like programming Python but loads faster and with type security, Nim programmers say it's like programming Python but loads faster and with type security, I may have even heard something similar from an OCaml user once, but you look at either of them and they're both missing key Pythonic features. Edit: In hindsight at the end of the day I should have been more careful with the "Scheme is not Lisp" (at least I didn't say "Scheme is not a Lisp") comment...I'm only continuing these threads because I read the original submission pretty close to when it was posted and back then I only knew a bit of SICP, tried enough Lisp to duplicate some SICP examples, and was frustrated with the Lisp-2 syntax along with what I perceived as a REPL freakout on any error so I put Lisp aside. It would have been helpful for someone to tell me "Scheme is not Lisp" back then and get me to actually explore all that Common Lisp has to offer.

Jach 9y ago

Sure, we see there's a grouping, and might identify it when trying to create a cluster, but it's not as pervasive as the Lisp Family meme. When Clojure came out, it was advertised as "a Lisp" (not "Lisp", but "a Lisp"). When Go came out, it wasn't advertised as "an ALGOL", or "a curly brace language". What makes so many programmers want to associate only good qualities with this floaty abstraction of "Lisp" (that isn't simply Common Lisp) such that the arguments over how Lispy Clojure/Scheme/EmacsLisp/whatever inevitably keep happening, such that things can advertise as "a Lisp" and get attention despite not having some pretty core Common Lisp functionality? The only other language I see something similar to that is with Python. Go programmers say it's like programming Python but loads faster and with type security, Nim programmers say it's like programming Python but loads faster and with type security, I may have even heard something similar from an OCaml user once, but you look at either of them and they're both missing key Pythonic features. Edit: In hindsight at the end of the day I should have been more careful with the "Scheme is not Lisp" (at least I didn't say "Scheme is not a Lisp") comment...I'm only continuing these threads because I read the original submission pretty close to when it was posted and back then I only knew a bit of SICP, tried enough Lisp to duplicate some SICP examples, and was frustrated with the Lisp-2 syntax along with what I perceived as a REPL freakout on any error so I put Lisp aside. It would have been helpful for someone to tell me "Scheme is not Lisp" back then and get me to actually explore all that Common Lisp has to offer.