2 Nov
2011
2 Nov
'11
6:02 p.m.
On 02/11/11 1:17 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
On 31 October 2011 21:31, Andrew
Burton<aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I think that is overstating the case.
Again, I don't see the purpose of the metaphor; they only seem to harden
people's uninformed opinions - the kind of lazy short-circuiting ("You
mentioned Lisp, so let's make a parenthesis joke, even though I haven't
ever written any Lisp" / "Omg Haskell, that monad stuff is craziness,
I'll stick with PHP thanks" / "Oh no, I can't use Scheme for this,
it's
TOO SLOW") that seems to happen far too often in this business already.
I recently began reading Paul Graham's "On Lisp" (a comprehensive and
very approachable manual to Common Lisp macros, with a lot of good
general advice throughout*), and found that the parts of Common Lisp
that I expected to find crufty turn out to be not so bad. I see no
reason to write it off as a baroque monstrosity, yet, and certainly
won't do so without taking it for a good long country drive (as I am now
trying to do with Scheme).
--Toby
* - Peter Norvig's Tutorial on Good Lisp Programming Style is also
indispensable for any programmer, not just Lisp programmers.
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1098
----- Original Message -----
From: "Liam Proven"<lproven at gmail.com>
/Howl's Moving Castle/ is a *novel* by thr late Diana Wynne Jones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl%27s_Moving_Castle
The book was subsequently adapted into a film by Hayao Miyazaki.
The point of the quote is not the film; it's the eponymous object. In
other words, the Scheme is small and fast and elegant but possibly a
bit too much hard work for some people; that Emacs Lisp may not be
pretty but it gets the job done very well; and that Common Lisp is,
especially by comparison to the other two, impossibly large and
complex and baroque and completely and utterly impractical.
Many thanks! Lots of food for further reading there.
May I ask: what do folk think of the quote I've often seen cited:
* Scheme is an exotic sports car. Fast. Manual transmission. No radio.
* Emacs Lisp is a 1984 Subaru GL 4WD: "the car that's always in front of
you."
* Common Lisp is Howl's Moving Castle.
Interesting quote comparing Common Lisp with an anime (Howls Moving Castle).
The anime is made by one of the legendary studios within the genre (Studio
Ghibli). So I guess it would be a great complement to the language.
My favourite Subaru is the Imprezza and any sports car has to be driven in
manual gears to get the most pleasure out of driving it - just don't go from
5th gear to 1st, whilst at high speed!!!
/That/ is what I was after folks' opinions on!