From: David Masover <ninja@...>
Date: 2009-02-25T08:24:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language

Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> If you were using CL (if more people were using CL), and Ruby were not
> invented, more bosses would let us use CL as a dynamic language,

No one can know that. For all you know, if Ruby were not invented, we 
would all be using Bash.

It's also not an argument of superiority -- if C was not invented, more 
bosses would let us use assembly. You could argue that higher-level 
languages were an inevitability -- and I would similarly argue that a 
more readable syntax (like Ruby) was inevitable.

Of course, you could always go try to find a job with Paul Graham, or 
found a startup of Lisp people. There's no need to force everyone to use 
the same language, when you can always work in whatever language you want.

> The fact that these monstruous syntaxes view good in the eyes of the
> unwashed masses, and that the lack of features (when it's not just the
> inclusion of misfeatures) is oblivious to the same masses IS NOT an
> excuse.
>   

What you're trying to argue is that everyone else in the world is wrong, 
and you are right.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you haven't 
provided any.

The fact that many people prefer this syntax, even when exposed to Lisp 
syntax, should tell you something about the value of each. And that's 
even before you consider that the purpose of syntax is communication. 
Any syntax that is hard to understand has failed at its purpose.

> PS: I'm not subscribed to "Ruby-Talk", there's a gateway between this
>     mail-list and news:comp.lang.ruby.
>   

Then why do you read and participate in comp.lang.ruby? I'm sure you'd 
find much more agreement, and maybe even some useful discussion, over at 
comp.lang.lisp. (I assume that exists.)



Now, here's the part you really don't want to hear:

"It's easy to talk big. It's damn hard to _implement_ a complex system, 
and make it stable and bug-free..."
  -- Linus Torvalds

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/232093

I was involved in a discussion overlapping the kernel mailing list, and 
this is perhaps the only email I've received directly from Linus 
Torvalds, addressed to me.

It made me sit down, and shut up, and actually try to get something done 
before I opened my big mouth again.

So I am curious -- what have you actually done in Common Lisp? How does 
it address the challenges of communication and organization of a large 
project? How fast can you whip up small, 100-line scripts to process 
text, or to provide a simple service over HTTP and REST? How many cores 
(or machines) do your programs scale to, and how much time do you spend 
dealing with concurrency issues?

It's easy to talk big.

But you haven't even done that -- you've listed no advantage of Lisp, 
other than claiming other languages have "monstrous syntax" -- how so?

One more link for you:

http://xkcd.com/224/