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Lisp. Lisp is the only language

Name: Anonymous 2011-01-31 10:29

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.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-02 22:54

Wow, so much trolling in this thread.
As for the question >>1 asked:
Lisp can be made into anything, although if you change it too much, it becomes something too different from Lisp, in which case it will either be a DSL or a completly new language implemented in Lisp.

Other languages exist because people made them. Some of them fit niches which Lisp isn't perfect for (C is good for mid/low-level code, although you can of course do low-level tasks in specific Lisp implementations; assembly is required for low-level parts of OSes, required in compilers, may be useful for squeezing performance out of an algorithm (or implementing something some SIMD-like instruction set), of course, assemblers can be implemented in Lisp and called at runtime (or compile-time) just as well). Others (such as Java, C#, C++) are meant to be easier to move to from those that learned to program in imperative languages like Fortran, C, Algol, Pascal (you can thank the educational systems for this).

Having some variety in programming languages doesn't hurt, although it does mean you'll have to learn new syntaxes and APIs which are very much alike each other (once you're familiar with the major paradigms). As for me, I'll be content using CL, C and my platform's assembly for most tasks, at least until I need to interoperate with code written in other languages, in which case I may write code in other languages - it won't kill me.

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