Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!ai-lab!zurich.ai.mit.edu!jinx From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: So who's really using LISP? Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 91 18:21:11 GMT References: <1227@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Reply-To: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu Distribution: comp.lang.lisp Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lines: 16 In-reply-to: weigele@bosun2.informatik.uni-hamburg.de's message of 11 Feb 91 08:31:16 GMT Nowadays, I think that Common Lisp has become a dinosaur because of the incredibly many features built in - also known as "creeping featurism" - as a result of the desire to be as compatible as possible. Languages like scheme seem much "cleaner" and "nicer". But even scheme lacks the kind of type support available in the modula/pascal/oberon language family, or in languages like ML. Your statement seems to imply that there is consensus that such type systems are desirable. Some of us in the Scheme community, and I bet many in the Lisp community, view such type systems as a step backwards, not forwards. I realize that this is a matter of taste, but there are good arguments for both kinds of type systems. Rather than choosing one over the other, it's even better to have a choice, so don't look for the ultimate language, because it would probably be a dinosaur or boring.