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From: shebs@utah-orion.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Scheme vs. (Common) Lisp
Message-ID: <176@utah-orion.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Oct-87 17:49:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: utah-ori.176
Posted: Wed Oct 21 17:49:22 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Oct-87 06:43:00 EDT
References: <3431@sol.ARPA> <23200001@silver>
Reply-To: shebs@orion.utah.edu.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 37

In article <23200001@silver> likes@silver.bacs.indiana.edu writes:

>[...] If you
>look at it Common Lisp is just one series of kludges after another
>(extra arguments to assoc, packages, no first-class functions, etc...)
>On the other hand, Scheme has more of a unified picture of the world
>(if you ignore versions with first class environments ala M.I.T.).

Kevin, I thought you knew more about Common Lisp and Scheme than that!

Can anyone really think that R^3 Scheme's ASSQ, ASSV, ASSOC triad are
better than CL's ASSOC that takes functional arguments?  Looks to me
like CL uses function objects *more* than Scheme does...  The *only*
difference between functions in Scheme and functions in CL is that CL
requires a special syntax to invoke a function object and Scheme doesn't.
It's the sort of thing I refer to as "semantic sugar"; it's not mere syntax,
but it's not that important either.

Packages were taken over almost verbatim from Symbolics, boycott their
equipment if you don't like packages.

Arguments about the comparative merit of language details border on the
sophomoric, but alas, they seem to be sanctioned by eminent scientists who
really should know better (exercise for the reader to think of five names).
I think it's more important what the language does for realistically-sized
programs.  I have yet to see any 5,000+ line programs for which it made any
significant difference which dialect (Scheme or CL) the program was written
in.  Call/cc and variables in the function position are at best a minute
percentage of large Scheme programs, while CL programmers avoid many fancy
features because of their expense or mismatch to the needs of the moment.

>Kevin T. Likes

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu