4 ms·
I don't know if you can say that Lisp is a counter example of those three things. Lisp has types and the language features are a manifestation of those types an
by oldandtired 9y ago
I don't know if you can say that Lisp is a counter example of those three things. Lisp has types and the language features are a manifestation of those types and the syntax of Lisp is, in many ways, governed by the constructs that define its types.
Even the so-called typeless languages have types, simple though they may be, as in bits and words, etc.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoOK, they have types. But are types the central organizing principle of those languages? Or of a theory of those languages? If I understand correctly, the central organizing principle of Lisp is the (untyped) lambda calculus.
- kazinator 9y agoLambda calculus, unless extended, has no data type other than the function (even numbers have to be built out of functions as Church numerals), and doesn't have access to its notation as a data structure. Lambda calculus has no symbol data type. We cannot fire up lambda calculus and have an interactive session in it in which almost everything is mutable. Lisp was named for "list processing"; lambda calculus has no lists: no cons, no car, no cdr. No quote to get a piece of syntax as a nested list data strucure. No eval to evaluate an expression. No apply to treat a list of items as arguments to a function.