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What makes Lisp...Lisp?

Name: Anonymous 2009-09-10 1:29

If you starting removing features from Lisp, at what point is it no longer Lisp? Some people claim Clojure shouldn't be considered a Lisp. Is it because too much Lisp was removed?

What is at the very heart of Lisp that makes it Lisp?

Name: Anonymous 2009-09-10 10:02

>>11
1-3 were always in C, but only the first is really useful. I don't see why anyone is gushing about 2 and 3. I've never really needed them that badly in C.

4 and 5 are unscientific and ultimately destructive.

6 can also be done in C. In fact, this is why functions have return values, and why we have the ternary operator. I don't see what this aversion to statements is all about, though....Lisp still needs to execute multiple consecutive statements in order to deal with side effects in a sane way, and even Haskell supports monads (which are lists of statements rather than functions). So, whatever.

7 is what enums are for. 8, I don't see the point. It would be nice if that one was actually explained. I think 8 is just an excuse to say that the parentheses are a good idea (which they seriously aren't).

9 is a huge performance hit, and the number one reason why Lisp was always considered a toy language compared to C. Writing dynamic code automatically makes it slower, and time is precious even in this age of egregiously fast desktops. Pretending this isn't true is an exercise in self delusion, which is why Paul Graham (the last "programmer" who actually uses Lisp) is currently in therapy and rehab for heroin/alcohol, and fighting his HIV infection.

Basically, this whole rant does nothing to support Lisp, and everything to support C. 0/10 kill yourself.

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