[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I was talking to some Lispers yesterday and they said > Scheme does NOT have a "SYMBOL" type. Rather, in Scheme > a symbol is "just a string" which is a good thing. He said Common Lisp DOES > have a symbol type only for "historical reasons". > I dunnoh. I like symbol types. They are kind of useful in all kinds of different places. I think the "historical reasons" is perhaps just one man's view. > I'm not happy knowing Common Lisp is more complicated than absolutely > necessary > "for historical reasons". > Prepare to be *very* unhappy then. Common Lisp *is huge*. It is a classic design-by-committee language. As Schemers are fond of pointing out, the table of contents for the ANSI Common Lisp standard is larger than the entire language standard for Scheme. CLOS has tons of redundant features. > Lisp needs a young "Torvalds" type leader to BREAK BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY and > create the BEST LISP POSSIBLE without giving one thought to past kruft. > > Perhaps Scheme is a good start for this. > Scheme is actually the end point. I mean, it was built with the above goal exactly in mind. Javascript could be viewed as an attempt to do the inverse. ;-)
--Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
