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From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: The powerlessness of Lisp
Message-ID: <1119@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 91 01:10:33 GMT
Sender: news@cs.arizona.edu
Lines: 21

In article  <16521:Mar2516:10:0791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> Dan Bernstein writes:
]Where are the examples? Where are the brilliant
]rewrites of statically typed code into dynamically typed code of a
]fraction of the length? Every example people give seems to depend almost
]entirely on the strength of available libraries...
]but what does that have to do with dynamic typing?

Dynamic typing encourages re-usability of code, thereby leading to
much more powerful libraries with fewer primitives.

]To return to my favorite example along these lines: Perhaps 1% of the
]GNU Emacs code is responsible for implementing dynamic typing in C; if
]it were all written in Lisp instead, it'd be about 99% of the original
]length. Where are the savings?

That's bogus.  You haven't taken into account all the redundant code
that does slightly different things, or all the declarations.
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman