Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: So who's really using LISP?
Message-ID: <4112@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 12 Feb 91 15:10:34 GMT
References: <1227@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> <weigele.666261076@bosun2> <1991Feb11.204514.19880@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Distribution: comp
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 19

In article <1991Feb11.204514.19880@Neon.Stanford.EDU> phil@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Phil Stubblefield) writes:
>In addition, the VAX was designed to be as compatible as possible
>across the entire family line, and also upwards compatible with the
>PDP-11, at least for the VAX-11's.  I think this is an interesting
>comparison to Common Lisp's desire "to be as compatible as possible
>with the existing lisp families."
>
>In contrast, it seems that Scheme is to Common Lisp what the new RISC
>wave is to the VAX.  Scheme seems like a cry of "Enough already!" to
>the complexities of Common Lisp, although I know far too little about
>Scheme to ascibe motives to its designers.

I like the CL : CISC :: Scheme : RISC analogy.  However, I think
it's worth bearing in mind that Common Lisp wasn't meant to include
everything from every Lisp or to be a union of (all good features
of) all Lisps.  Indeed, some people have criticized the CL designers
for making a MacLisp sucessor and not paying enough attention to the
rest of the Lisp world (eg, InterLisp, PSL, Lisp/VM), although they
aren't necessarily arguing for CL to be bigger.