JavaScript is sorta lisp with braces. Seriously, Brendan Eich the JS creator, had 2 weeks to build the scripting language for Netscape in the early '90s. So he came up with a version of Scheme.
The bosses all said "yuk, we want a real language, you know like C and Java!" .. go fetch another rock. So he just built a Scheme with braces! -- Owen On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Gary Schiltz <g...@naturesvisualarts.com>wrote: > > On Jun 18, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Gary Schiltz <g...@naturesvisualarts.com > > wrote: > > On a tangential note, I'm trying to come out of retirement (sabbatical >> :-) after about five years, and whoa, it's incredible how much has changed, >> even though I've tried to stay more or less current the whole time. Forget >> SourceForge, it's all on GitHub now! Does anyone even consider the >> possibility that a user might have JavaScript disabled in their browser? >> You wouldn't get very far these days. What's this cloud thing again? Makes >> me want to give up and go back to watching X-Files reruns :-) >> > > I hear you! Steve G and I have been discussing this relative to SimTable > and AgentScript. Its a race to just stay in place. > > But even here there is a core that is pretty solid. Git has replaced > source control and is pretty understandable, more so than the others when > you get that it really is a file system of sorts, with all the usual > create, rm/mv, file/folder, etc components. Github does throw in a wrinkle > or two. > > > I was mainly commenting on the fact that I have a whole lot of catching up > to do. Actually, I'm really excited about the internet landscape of 2013, > and I'm pretty sure I prefer it to the landscape I left in 2008. > > This is one of the reasons for wedtech. We need to know what we don't > know. And then we need help distributing the load. We've gotten so there > are local experts on git, webgl, html5/css3 and so on. > > More importantly, there is one huge simplification if you fit it: > javascript. It is now the client (browser & apps & phones/tvs), the server > (nodejs), and the network (async IO with JSON). I recently experience this > when I wanted to make AgentScript.org more easily managed. I graduated > from a simple coffeescript build command and a few bash scripts, to a > coffeescript based "make" called, naturally, cake. It was completely > familiar because it was javascript/coffeescript all the way down. > > So in one area, programming, its actually getting less complex. > > > It does seem that the internet ecosystem is settling down rather nicely, > with emphasis on standards (HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, RDF (maybe)). > Personally, I'm a Lisp fan, and these days it's possible to use Clojure > server-side (it compiled to JVM byte code) and ClojureScript client-side > (it compiles via Google Closure to optimized, minimized JavaScript). But > then, paraphrasing a popular Ruby article from half a dozen years ago, I > can see how "JavaScript is an Acceptable Lisp". And with a more open > ecosystem, I don't have to choose what is an "Acceptable Lisp", but write > in whatever language that gets compiled to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, RDF. > > ;; Gary > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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