On Dec 9, 9:16 pm, Ken Wesson <kwess...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:13 AM, javajosh <javaj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Dec 9, 9:07 pm, Ken Wesson <kwess...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 11:55 PM, javajosh <javaj...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> > Common Lisp. > > >> It figures. :) > > > It's still a really exciting story - thanks Alec for sharing it! I was > > reading Gabor's post (http://quotenil.com/Planet-Wars-Post- > > Mortem.html) and it sounds like something I might enjoy next time. > > Perhaps I'll give it a shot with clojure. > > > The exciting thing is that a) the winning program was Lisp, b) it won > > by a lot, and c) 99 out of the top 100 were not Lisp. Now, this could > > just mean that Gabor was unusually obsessed with the contest, and the > > language just "got out of his way". Personally, I'm ok with that. > > That is indeed one of Lisp's strengths -- once you're reasonably > proficient with it, the language frequently does just "get out of the > way", in much the way that Java doesn't.
Yeah, I just wrote in a blog comment somewhere (now lost in the aether, alas) that, basically, you can make *any* reasonable solution sketch work in a Lisp. If you want to keep thinking in Java, fine. You can do that. If you want get all functional, cool. In the end, all real programming work is just ordering the execution of imperative, side-effect generating functions. The ordering and parameterization of those calls is arbitrary (and fun!). For Clojure there's the added question of "what level of side-effect functions will you want?" - e.g. with javax.Swing or java.awt.Graphics? I don't know anything about Common Lisp but I'm sure they have the same decisions to make WRT C libraries. It does beg the question, though: what is a reasonable bare minimum function set that a real-life lisp would require? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
