Tracy R Reed wrote:
State is normally stored on the stack in a functional language. The
difference is that it is managed in a way where it doesn't get out of
control. I don't think they have totally failed at all. I think hardware
is just now catching up to them
I might grant you this. Garbage collection does indeed have an overhead
when memory is small. Affordable, big memories really came on line
around 1996-2000.
and they are getting over the bias that
people developed for them (meaning Lisp) after the AI bubble burst.
The Lispers whine about this, but I don't buy it. Nobody really thinks
about AI anymore.
I would argue that the fact that none of the Lispniks seem to be willing
to put in the grunt work to make Lisp a truly useful *system* is the
barrier. They would rather whine.
Take a look at the Gtk porting matrix:
http://www.gtk.org/bindings.html
The Lisp systems (common-lisp and scheme) are still stuck on a (poor)
Gtk+2.4 implementation. Nobody is willing to put in the work.
Judging by this matrix, the most important second-tier languages to pay
attention to are Ada, Haskell, Pascal(!), and Ruby. Ayup, I could agree
with that.
Lisp isn't weak because of Lisp. It's weak because its "experts" won't
shut up and code. Somehow, every language except Lisp has folks who
will code like mad in it.
(Actually, that's not completely true. This bunch seems to actually be
*doing* something with Lisp rather than just complaining:
http://schemeway.dyndns.org/mslug/mslug-home
But they are the exception in the Lisp world).
If it were a failed concept I don't think MS would be about to introduce a
language based on the idea.
Don't go there. M$ has *more* than it's fair share of technical failures.
Your statement has merit when M$ ships a product written in F#.
-a
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