Raffael Cavallaro wrote: > Of course it does - Thats why we try ocaml and haskell etc. It's just > that we don't see the useful features of these languages as being > sufficiently useful to compensate for their lack of the ability to > easily do syntactic abstractions over a uniform syntax.
That applies to the Lispers who've tried other languages and stayed with Lisp. > There's no > question that other languages have some features that common lisp does > not (and vice versa). Lispers just can't abide being locked into a > particular paradigm because a language doesn't have the basic features > (macros and uniform syntax) necessary to provide new paradigms for > ourselves when needed or wanted. Why do you think that uniform syntax is necessary to provide new paradigms when it is equivalent to infix syntax? > For example, a common lisp with optional static typing on demand would > be strictly more expressive than common lisp. But, take say, haskell; > haskell's static typing is not optional (you can work around it, but > you have to go out of your way to do so); haskell's pure functional > semantics are not optional (again, workarounds possible to a limited > extent). In what way is Haskell's support for imperative programming limited? > This requires you to conceive your problem solution (i.e., > program) within the framework of a particular paradigm. This lock-in to > a particular paradigm, however powerful, is what makes any such > language strictly less expressive than one with syntactic abstraction > over a uniform syntax. Can you give an example of a Lisp macro that does something useful that you can't do in these other languages? -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Objective CAML for Scientists http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/index.html?usenet -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
