Re: Lisp is Sin

Eli Gottlieb wrote:
> Kenny Tilton wrote:
> > That is not why it is the ultimate. It is the ultimate because it can
> > morph itself to handle the better things people think of. And do not
> > think any language can do that (or start talking about Turing
> > equivalence <g>). When Lisp adopted OO we got CLOS, the best OO out
> > there. When C adopted OO we got C++. Nuff said?
> >
> > kenny
> Since when is CLOS the best OO out there? It is a certain style of OO
> that happens to work remarkably well as part of Lisp, but I'd think that
> Smalltalk takes the prize for best OO out there.

I could press my shirts with the irony of this statement.

You say that Smalltalk is the best OO out there when what you mean is
that it is the most Smalltalk-like OO out there. There are other styles
of OO, CLOS is one, and every style has its advocates claiming that it
is the best.

Kenny said "it is the ultimate because it can morph itself to handle
the better things people think of," and he wasn't lying.

You prefer Smalltalk? That's fine. Make a macro package which provides
Smalltalk-style message passing. You may note that such a macro package
can live side-by-side with CLOS (and would likely _be_ CLOS, on the
inside).

The real reason Lisp has the best OO out there has nothing to do with
CLOS and everything to do with Lisp. Lisp is the greatest common
denominator of programming languages, and can act like any other
programming language if you have the time and know-how to make it so.

.