> > Lisp is truly beautiful, you have to try to see its beauty. > The concept > of a program that can write itself at run-time and then be evaluated
> (executed) is truly brilliant. Not too sure about that. I had an excellent training in programming all those years ago. In my first job as a programmer I (and my colleagues who joined before me) where handed some standard specs on day one, pointed towards the cupboard full of manuals, and told to come back in a few months when I'd written all the programs in assembler. After that we wrote a mix of COBOL and assembler. One of my colleagues, just for the helluvit, wrote an assembler program which he then translated into a large string constant which he coded into the Working Storage of a COBOL program. The first instruction of the COBOL program was a branch to the start of Working Storage, where it then executed the constant as a program. Very clever, but not exactly a maintenance programmer's dream. > Given the time when it was > envisioned... Well, one of the key insights of von Neumann (?) was the equivalence of data and program, so we should expect that someone would make use of the idea. In fact, I think even Turing may have done so. -- Bob > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Boris Liberman > Sent: 27 January 2007 05:47 > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List > Subject: Re: Interest in developing a software around photograhy? > > Peter, > > P. J. Alling wrote: > > IIRC LISP came first. I find it's notation annoying at best and > > impenetrable at worst. > > C and C++ were elegant, until such things a Templates, (with their > > particularly un-C like syntax), were grafted onto the language. > > > > Now ForTran that was man's language. > > Lisp is truly beautiful, you have to try to see its beauty. > The concept > of a program that can write itself at run-time and then be evaluated > (executed) is truly brilliant. Given the time when it was > envisioned... > > C is cool, but from totally different perspective. C++ is just > monstrous. I think C++ is actually a Hummer H1 of programming > languages. > You can drive to the super market with it, and you can also > go all the > way off-road. And if you handle it right and give it proper > maintenance, > it will not disappoint you. Lisp on the other hand is like a glider - > taking you from A to B in a gentle breeze. > > Boris > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
