[ale] Why LISP? (was Why Ruby?)

[Joe Knapka]

"John P. Healey" <jpheale at LearnLink.Emory.Edu> writes:

> If I'm writing a throwaway script, i'll usually use python.  If I'm trying to
> make a web interface to a database, I'll use PHP.  But for any substantial
> programming task, I've yet to find any language that can match the power of
> lisp.

Agreed, but there's one thing Lisp lacks, in my experience (which
I admit is not very extensive):

A truly comprehensive and, most importantly, easy-to-use standard
library that covers all the basic tasks one might need in modern
application development. Specifically, networking and UI programming
are not dealt with well in a standard and portable way, as far as I
can tell. I'm sure there are specific Lisp implementations that handle
such tasks well, but for the ones I can afford (read "free"), the
state-of-the-Lisp-art in portable UI programming seems to be on the
order of crude wrappers around an embedded Tcl interpreter!  Arguments
that Tcl is a dialect of Lisp aside, this is not a groovy state of
affairs, in my opinion anyway. Also, the set of Lisp compilers that
implements any given subset of the CL spec seems always to have
size <= 1, which makes writing truly portable code kind of
difficult.

Though there is Armed Bear Common Lisp, which runs on the JVM, and
makes the Java stdlib available in what appears to be a fairly
transparent way. I haven't investigated that too far yet.

Anyway, an entire generation of programmers -- maybe two -- has been
ruined for Lisp-like languages by the likes of Java.  Sigh.  Python is
the new Lisp, Java is the new Cobol.

Cheers,

-- Joe

-- 
No sig for you today.
--
pub  1024D/BA496D2B 2004-05-14 Joseph A Knapka
     Key fingerprint = 3BA2 FE72 3CBA D4C2 21E4  C9B4 3230 94D7 BA49 6D2B
If you really want to get my attention, send mail to
jknapka .at. kneuro .dot. net.