Re: Koch figures

Joe Marshall <jmarshall@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> A.L. <lewando_won_@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> And below is in Java. Could somebody, using both examples, explain why
>> "Lisp is better"?...
>
> This example is too small to show off the strengths of Lisp.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I think that is a very important sentence.

Trying to find the "right-sized" example is very difficult
indeed unless you know your audience's background very well.

Pascal Costanza mentions the same thing, "to understand the
power you need something big", maybe that's the
reason why he, instead of tackling toy problems, dived into
CL headlong and developed AspectL, ContextL, etc. using
CLOS, MOP, etc. As a very experienced Java programmer he says
he preferred CL.

Another example: SWCLOS

http://iswc2004.semanticweb.org/demos/32/

http://international-lisp-conference.org/2005/tutorials.html#swclos_semantic_web_processing_in_clos

What does the above example mean to a Java programmer?
To a C# programmer? What about PHP programmers? Do PHP
programmers talk about OWL and logical reasoning nowadays?
Is MetaObject Protocol "simply something like reflection in
Java/C#"? How can you make people understand?

A question: Can you impress a C, C++, Java, Perl, etc.
programmer by saying: "Imagine that we have Lisp and
no OO functionality, how can we put OO in it by
simply using closures, lambdas, etc.? How could
you do it for your language?" Is this a right-sized
example?

For experienced other-language programmers intermediate level
examples are not very impressive. For beginners complex
examples simply do not mean much. The spectrum is wide and
deep and this situation feeds lots of hot (and generally
not very meaningful) debate and trolls.

I wonder if other comp.lang.* groups receive so many
posts titled "Why *?" :)

--
Emre Sevinc

eMBA Software Developer Actively engaged in:
http:www.bilgi.edu.tr http://ileriseviye.org
http://www.bilgi.edu.tr http://fazlamesai.net
Cognitive Science Student http://cazci.com
http://www.cogsci.boun.edu.tr
.

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