Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?

[D Herring]

On 01/03/2011 11:49 PM, rusi wrote:
> On Jan 3, 6:05 pm, Tim Harig<user...@ilthio.net>  wrote:
> > What hurts the LISP community far more is the zealotry of its members,
> > their insistance that LISP is the *only* tool for *every* job, and their
> > agressiveness in trying to push it off on to everybody else -- whether
> > everybody else happens want it or not.  Whether this is indicitive
> > of the entire community or simply the result of those most apparent,
> > I cannot say; but, it leads to the overall impression that the LISP
> > community is narrowminded and neophobic.  Who would want to be part of
> > such a community?

Like the dark days of apple, bsd, and linux, there can be some bizarre 
fanboyism in the lisp community.  Geeks are always technical but often 
not personable.


> There are more mundane reasons -- like unsuitability of lisp as a
> distribution platform
> [See http://www.newartisans.com/about-me.html where John Wiegley
> explains why he switched from lisp to C++ for his program ledger ]

First he says "It was originally written in C++, but lately I’ve been 
porting it to Common Lisp, since I’ve realized how much simpler – and 
more powerful – many of its aspects will become."

Then there's a cryptic "I found Common Lisp unsuitable as a 
distribution platform."

Trying not to sound fanboyish, but there are numerous ways to 
distribute lisp apps.  There have been a couple notable improvements 
in the last year; but several implementations have always offered to 
spit out an ordinary, standalone executable.

I think many readers in the other cross posted newsgroups have seen 
similar come-and-go users leave their favorite language.

- Daniel