Re: Request for comment: follow-up to Summer of Code

matthewknox@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

<snip>

> No really. Why lisp?
>
> A programming language is a lot of things, but the most central is a
> pipe between your messy, biological, analog head and certain kinds of
> discrete math, usually machine code. Some programming languages, like
> C, assembler, and fortran, are very close to the actual details of some
> actual machine. Others, like Haskell, Python, perl, and so forth, are
> much farther away from any actual machine, but are closer to your head,
> and so are a lot easier to program in, because you can think more about
> your problem and less about the machine. The lisp family of languages
> is unique in the degree to which it allows you to be both close to the
> machine and close to pure thought-stuff in the same language, sometimes
> even in the same program.

Fortran 95 and 2003 are higher level languages than C or assembler, and
are arguably higher-level than Python or Lisp in the area of scientific
computing. Of course, "higher-level" /= "better". Language comparisons
should be based on current versions of languages for which compilers or
interpreters exist.

.

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