Path: utzoo!attcan!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: <4105@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 11 Feb 91 21:07:06 GMT References: <1227@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Distribution: comp Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 24 In article weigele@bosun2.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Martin Weigele) writes: >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. I'm glad it doesn't have the kind of "type support" available in Pascal. ML is reasonably flexible as far as types are concerned, but lacks too many things (eg, much in the way of I/O, a good macro mechanism). In short, Lisp still wins. If you want something smaller and cleaner than CL, try Scheme. BTW, the idea that CL has too many features out of a desire to be compatible with older dialects isn't quite right. For example, the scoping rules in CL are a cleanup and generalization of those in (compiled) MacLisp, not (as some have supposed) a mix of things from different dialects. -- jd