From: Nicholas Van Weerdenburg <vanweerd@...>
Date: 2005-01-15T06:08:52+09:00
Subject: Re: A patch for irb, where to submit?

Ruby has been described as a dialog of lisp, with infix notation.

Macros and access to the AST are probably deal-breakers though for
being a fair statement.

Still, reading about Lisp was as helpful for my understanding Ruby
then reading about Ruby. Blocks and expressions enabling succinctness
and bottom-up programming was the most enlightening "ruby vs. python"
insight I had.

What makes lisp different:
http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html

Succinctness is Power
http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html

Programming Bottom Up
http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 03:03:14 +0900, trans.  (T. Onoma)
<transami@runbox.com> wrote:
> On Friday 14 January 2005 12:50 pm, Joel VanderWerf wrote:
> | Csaba Henk wrote:
> | > <OT>
> | > Well, it's quite a surprise that you are the one who answered my post...
> | > Just before I read your answer, I decided that I give you my "quote of
> | > the week" award, due to an old post of you, to which I bumped on
> | > accidentally... It says: "If we ever find intelligent creatures somewhere
> | > else in the universe, they will know pi, e, and some dialect of LISP." ;)
> | > Is it original? </OT>
> 
> It has certainly been said before. Who originated the statement I do not know.
> It would be interesting to find out.
> 
> It was once said that Ruby too borders on this type of universality. Though I
> think that's a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless we can be pretty sure that
> dialects of Assembly, Lisp, Forth and Prolog are indeed being used or have
> been used by I.A. (assuming they exist/had existed).
> 
> T.
> 
> 

-- 
Nicholas Van Weerdenburg