Re: Popularity of programming languages

From: Cameron MacKinnon (cmackin+nn_at_clearspot.net)
Date: 03/01/04 

Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 20:40:06 -0500

Christophe Rhodes wrote:
> OK, well, there are two things wrong here. The first is that it is an
> unfair comparison: it is comparing, as Pascal quite rightly points
> out, a single implementation against the intersection of libraries
> written for implementations of Common Lisp. Do you see the point now?
> A fair comparison would be to compare the /functionality/ offered by
> /one/ Common Lisp implementation (and an equally biassed comparison
> the other way would be to compare the union of available functionality
> over all Common Lisp implementations). The other wrong thing is the
> assertion that "useful standard" => "libraries written in pure
> <standard>"; I hope the reasoning is obvious.

I think that the difference between the intersection and the union that
you mention above is a rough metric of the utility of the CL standard to
the community. If most libraries can accomplish all of their
functionality without using extra-standard features, that's great.
"Write once, run anywhere." If not, that suggests that the standard
isn't comprehensive enough. Of course, we can exclude libraries that are
inherently non portable, such as those tied to a particular windowing
system.

How about:
"useful standard" * "caring, sharing community" * "a decade elapsed"
   => "lots of libraries written in pure <standard>"

I'm not questioning the second term, I'm asserting it.

Lupo gave us his impression of the number of libraries available for CL
versus Lush. The obvious rebuttal would've been proof to the contrary,
but instead he was told that it was an unfair comparison and/or he
couldn't use a search engine. I didn't believe those two arguments to be
either enlightening or fair.

I've already shown that some of the standard newbie type searches return
unhelpful results, and I gave pointers to library collections, which
elicited some other pointers to other collections (and some gratuitous
comments on *my* ability to use a search engine).

> I suspect you're reading from "Common Lisp the Language, second
> edition". Between the publication of that book and the finalization
> of the ANSI specification, READ-SEQUENCE and WRITE-SEQUENCE were added
> to the language, giving you the ability to do block I/O.

Thanks for the pointer to READ-SEQUENCE -- I wasn't aware of it. I'm not
using CLTL2, just SICP and a mishmash of online resources, including the
CLHS. And thanks for your other tips regarding my binary file work. They
have opened up useful avenues of further exploration. 

-- 
Cameron MacKinnon
Toronto, Canada
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