Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!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 18:25:49 GMT References: <1227@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> <1991Feb11.204514.19880@Neon.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Reply-To: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu Distribution: comp Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lines: 19 In-reply-to: phil@Neon.Stanford.EDU's message of 11 Feb 91 20:45:14 GMT 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. Although reducing the size of the instruction set and addressing modes seems to be a performance win in architecture, it is not clear that reducing the size of a programming language is desireable. The real question is what the expressive power of the language is and whether Scheme "gives up" some of Common Lisp's expressive power. I don't think the answer is clear. In other words, richer languages don't necessarily mean slower or worse languages, while it seems that richer instruction sets mean slower machines. I am firmly in the Scheme community but often envy Common Lisp constructs and features.