Why there are other programming languages besides Lisp? With Lisp's macro system you can create any language you need ever. Small, big, finely tuned for your task. Supporting other languages means opposing progress and delaying the inevitable future. There should be only one language and myriad languages at the same time. The one language is Lisp.
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Anonymous2011-02-02 17:46
But you said you could do anything Lisp does and better~ :(
Nope. I could do anything Lisp does not much worse, and then some things that I actually want to do, much better.
expr1 and expr2 and expr3 and expr4 doesn't count as multiline, a (logical) ``line'' in Python is (expr|stmt)[\n;]
In a language full of statements, having lambdas that can't use them is pointless.
You don't understand. Again, the chicken memory of yours is to blame, I'm getting a suspicion regarding your preferred Scheme dialect.
I can have as long lambdas as I want, split into separate lines and indented any way I want, as long as they are enclosed in parentheses. That part about necessary parentheses, it doesn't bother you too much, I presume?
Now there's a problem -- normally, I use statements in Python, like, the "for" statement, or the "while" statement, or the "raise" statement, and so on.
Well, as it happens, all my looping needs are completely satisfied with list comprehensions, and for things like "raise" I can define a "raise_" function which does exactly that. I have to do it once and then just import my "void.py" which contains everything I need. I'm OK with having to do it with a named function, because I have to do it once.
You might prefer
Nope, I don't prefer you pointlessly showing off in any fashion. too lisp; didn't read.
By the way, show something Lisp can't do, now.
Not looking like an oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in, in a commonly accepted fashion?
It can't. So I prefer to use languages which allow me to do everything Lisp can do with not much overhead, and then do the things I want without looking like the proverbial oatmeal, e.g. much much better.
PS: I want to point out that we quite digressed from my original point, which was not about why I don't use Lisp, but about the peculiar property of the vast majority of the Lisp advocates: they tend to praise mundane, simple features that are already included in VisualBasic.NET™, as true mind openers. And then, in more private circumstances, complain that it's these features that are too hard for the rabble to understand, and that's why Lisp is unpopular. Unlike VisualBasic.NET™. And that this enigmatic tendency might have something to do with the fact that Lisp is so unpopular that it's less popular than Haskell. Namely, that the Lisp community consists mostly of mentally retarded people, and that is a push off of a kind.