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Was Sussman talking about the syntax, or things like lexical scope, which he and Steele introduced to the LISP world with Scheme in the mid-70s? About the only
by hga 13y ago
Was Sussman talking about the syntax, or things like lexical scope, which he and Steele introduced to the LISP world with Scheme in the mid-70s?
About the only relevant negative thing I remember being said about Chomsky in a period just after your's was Marvin Minsky saying he saved someone from going down a rabbit hole following Chomsky's work. But that was a judgement of merit of his linguistics work, not his politics.
- ScottBurson 13y agoWell, the lexical scope, certainly, but I don't recall him disparaging the syntax. I don't recall any burning of Dragon Books. Nor was Vaughan Pratt tarred and feathered for releasing CGOL, which allowed one to write Lisp in infix syntax. People were aware of it, and a few people used it, but it didn't catch on in a big way. I don't think this was for ideological reasons; I think it was simply that most people writing Lisp (myself included) found that with proper editor support, editing fully parenthesized code is easy and pleasant -- more so, in many cases, than editing infix code. That is the fact that many non-Lispers cannot believe could possibly be true. And yet over and over again, people who learn Lisp report that it is.