I looked up the Wiki link and it said that Greenspun never had rule 1-9 and came up with the name "the tenth rule" because it sounded impressive. This "rule" was used to express an opinion and with no backing arguments, should be disregarded as irrelevant.
I presume that the "slow implementation of half of Common Lisp" is in reference to Lisp using Polish Prefix Notation (PPN) and the fact that all interpreters that compile to byte code also use PPN. 1. Lisp was created in 1958 and was the second (Fortran was first) higher level language invented for commercial computers. If Lisp was so good then why do we have literally thousands of computer languages and at the very least a few dozen that are currently used by thousands of programmers? 2. The instructions of all modern CPUs are in PPN. The only other way they could be created is with a fixed size instruction set that would be much less efficient. Is PPN Lisp or does Lisp also use PPN? 3. The question is "is using PPN in a byte code interpreter running a subset of Lisp"? My answer is obviously NO! 4. Lisp was very slow for decades and I would argue that Lisp is still slow except for the benchmarks that some implementers have optimized to try to sell their wares. Benchmarks are an art rather than a science. 5. All interpreters aren't "slow" and some like Java and C# have included JIT compiling to machine code to make their speed approach that of assembler. I have many complains about Lisp as a computer language but my biggest complaint is that PPN is good for machines but lousy for humans. My internal byte code is "surprise" PPN but I can't imagine why anyone would ever write code at that level when they can use a much more human friendly source code. The answer is that they wouldn't use that low level PPN as source code and that more than anything else is why Lisp is essentially a dead language. It is extremely difficult to see the shape of the nested loops and control structures as they blend in to all the other function calls. The ability to extend the language (the biggest reason people say you should use Lisp) is very useful but has no direct connection to using "S expressions" or PPN as source code. David PS I have included my comments on "rule 11" in another post. From: Juan Carlos Kuri Pinto [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: January-23-13 3:37 PM To: AGI Subject: [agi] Greenspun's tenth rule and eleventh rule ^_^ Greenspun's tenth rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule Greenspun's eleventh rule: Any sufficiently parallel program written in a non-purely functional programming language, like C, Assembler, Java, Lisp, Scheme, and OCaml, contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Haskell. AGI | <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/1652298-7c98969f> Image removed by sender.| <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; c> Modify Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> Image removed by sender. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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