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I am extremely disappointed that the only example of a "weird language" is Lisp. These days — with Clojure, Common Lisp, Racket, Guile, Emacs Lisp, Chez Scheme
by codesections 5y ago
I am extremely disappointed that the only example of a "weird language" is Lisp. These days — with Clojure, Common Lisp, Racket, Guile, Emacs Lisp, Chez Scheme, Fennel, etc. etc. — Lisp is hardly weird.
I'd love to see an expanded version of this article written by someone less focused on Lisp advocacy than Paul Graham seems to be.
- brabel 5y agoI agree. Lisp should be considered one of the most successful languages ever invented given the number of descendants it has sprout, as you mention. It's not a weird language at all. Incredible projects like Guix, Emacs and Datomic are proof that Lisp is still alive and well and can create great things. I would give Prolog or maybe Forth as examples of weird language that still have a "smart userbase".
- Abhinav2000 5y agoUmmmm sorry to burst your bubble, all those languages you mentioned are considered part of the lisp family (I'm not sure what Fennel is, so can't comment), so actually you interpreted Paul's statement incorrectly - he didn't say Common Lisp or Scheme in particular, he said Lisp so was referring to all of them. For what its worth, he's writing his own Lisps (Bel, Arc), is highly proficient in Scheme (just check out the book On Lisp), and is a true lisp polygot. I can't speak for him obviously but I don't think he has a super strong affiliation _just_ to Common Lisp.