
Language Adoption and Lisps - mqt
http://www.redlinernotes.com/blog/?p=889
======
Hexstream
"I don’t mention Common Lisp here because, again I stress personally, I hope
we stop encouraging it’s active use."

Keep hoping.

"I consider [Common Lisp] [...] over-engineered for almost any other
scenario."

Pretty broad claim, in what way is CL over-engineered and for what particular
scenarios? And how does that justify discouraging its use?

Sounds like someone is looking for excuses not to get busy learning a language
in depth... Seriously, if you don't feel like learning a language, fine. But
don't criticize that which you only understand the basics of.

~~~
jcl
I was curious about that comment as well... I really like the cleanliness of
Scheme, but I also find myself attracted to Lisp's ability to selectively
optimize a program, for example by declaring the type of variables. To my
knowledge this ability is not included in any Scheme implementation. Does such
a Scheme actually exist?

~~~
redline6561
Apologies for the site being down at the moment. I'd reset the server but I'm
in Chicago. I know that PLT Scheme recently had a system for optional types
implemented and there was a paper posted on Lambda-the-ultimate.org. I think
it's in SVN. <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2622>

Apparently, Bigloo has supported this for a while: <http://www-
sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Bigloo/doc/bigloo-22.html>

One should also consider that there are implementations like Gambit-C and
Chicken that compile to type-annotated languages, not that it's necessarily
what you had in mind. Just food for thought.

------
redline6561
I'm going to finalize this post tonight but in the meantime I want to
elucidate the main point before the discussion gets off-topic.

I was really trying to write more about the fact that the implementations and
communities we have (which are often harped on) are sufficient. The problem is
a lack of community formed around sharing code and building tools, libraries,
etc which I feel could be solved by a module system. It's a sociological
issue. My Common Lisp comment was off-the-cuff but not meant to be as
judgmental as it sounded. As I've said, it's an impression but I'll write more
about the later. Let's keep the focus on how to solve the problem of sharing
code between lisps. That's what I see as the big thing holding lisps (of all
stripes) back.

------
ken
Does C or C++ have a single or dominant implementation?

~~~
redline6561
No. At least, there are multiple compilers for it if you want to go by that.
There are a variety of reasons that I didn't want to cover C/C++. I mention in
the second paragraph that I'm interested in the subset of languages that have
achieved some mainstream success. By some success, I mean less than 20% of
software companies actually hire for those languages. That second paragraph is
all really about me copping out of dealing with C, C++, Java, or C#. I know.
Classy, right?

