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Nobody mentioned s-expressions, and there's more to lisp syntax than that. The s-expressions have to mean something, and it is at this level that usability is m
by dTal 9y ago
Nobody mentioned s-expressions, and there's more to lisp syntax than that. The s-expressions have to mean something, and it is at this level that usability is made or broken.
Scheme is beautiful, but it sacrifices usability for purity. Common Lisp, on the other hand, is usually held to be both "ugly" and "better for real work(tm)".
Here's a nice blog post that highlights the practicality issue with Scheme's design.
http://arcanesentiment.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/if-scheme-were-like-scheme.html http://arcanesentiment.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/if-scheme-were...
- xfer 9y ago> Here's a nice blog post that highlights the practicality issue with Scheme's design. That post complains about numerical tower not belonging to some library and being more generic. I don't understand how that is more/less practical. Common-lisp also has a numerical tower afaik. I don't understand how does that make it "better for real work(tm)".
- dTal 9y agoDude, you completely missed the point of that post. It literally says in the second sentence that Scheme's numeric tower was borrowed from Common Lisp. The point is that if Scheme's numbers were like the rest of Scheme, they would be horribly impractical.