Re: Is Lisp a Blub?

Pascal Costanza <pc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote on Mon, 02 Jul 2007:
This is one of Paul Graham's worst text fragments, IMHO (the rest of "Beating
the Averages is quite good, though). You can only relate to it when you think
that you're "up in the power continuum." However, you may simply not know
that others are even "higher" in the "power continuum." There are essentially
two possibilities: Either another language is worse than the one you prefer,
or you simply don't understand it, in which case it simply _appears_ to be
worse to you. This effectively means that, if you think that another language
is worse than the one you prefer, you simply cannot draw any
conclusions.

I understand this perspective, and to a large extent, agree with it.

Let me try to express it a different way. If you talk to somebody that has
only programmed in C, and try to explain the benefits of having a built-in
garbage collector, they often just "don't get it". Don't understand how it
would aid programmer productivity. Similarly, a Java-only programmer might
not get the power of macros.

In both cases, most Lispers respond with a "higher power" argument: these are
tools that are useful in almost EVERY domain (not just one limited
application), and if you can't appreciate it, it probably means you don't
understand it.

So, I'm interested in avoiding this C/Java limited vision, but coming from
a Lisp background instead. I agree completely with you that Graham provides
no constructive way to tell the difference. He doesn't aid you at all in
understanding where you are in the middle of the power spectrum of programming
languages.

Lispers often believe themselves to be "at the top", or at least nearby.
I'm looking for pointers to generic programming language concepts that might
possibly indicate a higher-power language, but which are missing from Lisp.
Pattern-matching programming is at least a valid candidate. Prolog-style
unification and inference probably is too.

Is it so absurd to try to look beyond Lisp at programming in the abstract?

In contrast, I find Paul Graham's ideas about "Blub" counter-enlightening.

Upon reflection, I agree with your criticism. But at least he brought up
the topic :-).

-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don@xxxxxxxxxx
Eagles may soar, free and proud, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
.

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