Re: Lisp and Scheme with fewer parentheses / Mathematica??

No Rainer, you don't understand.

Try to get out of lisp mindset, and view things from general humanity.

Alternatively, imagine a alien from outer space is visiting earth. He,
being a alien, don't understand how computer scientists classifed
languages here, nor anything about our hardware such as silicon cpu
and “memories” etc. He, being advanced alien, we assume he understands
advanced mathematics far beyond us. In particular, 1+1 is still 2 for
him, and any implications.

Now, will this Alien, buy your stuff about how lisp is this and that?

Also, let's be explicit about what we are arguing here, even in
general there is no clearly defined or focus of a newsgroup
argumentation. But, roughly, in our context, the argument is about,
whether, is it reasonable, to say that programing in mathematica is
analogous to a far more powerful system of lisp's macros.

Now, if you agree that this is the subject as i phrased it, then, i
think you either don't have opion, or, you agree with me. Further, i
argue, that this phrase, is a reasonable interpretation where the
thread is from, more specifically, it is a reasonable interpretation
of what Jon Harrop said, of which Richard Fateman retorts.

Now, if you don't agree that the subject is as i phrased it, then, you
can rephrase it, or explicitly define a subject that we would argue
about. Then, i, or others, can voice our opinion. (or not)

Xah
xah@xxxxxxxxxx
? http://xahlee.org/

On Jan 8, 1:50 pm, Rainer Joswig <jos...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<a4fa6a2d-2eed-4ea9-bb83-d8b27cfe7...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Xah Lee <x...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

2008-01-07

I just ran into a newsgroup post, where the redoubtable Richard J
Fateman (a well-known Mathematica hater) sullies Mathematica by
sputtering computer sciency obfuscation.

Here's the source of the message:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/163eb656becfcab6?dm...

You may want to read Richard's mail again and check what he is saying.

He is basically right.

Mathematica is a rule-based rewrite-system at its core.
That makes it substantially different from the evaluation
'rules' of (Common) Lisp.

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/03_ab.htm

or older:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node55.html#SECTION0090...

Compare that with

http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/book/section-2.6.1
http://documents.wolfram.com/mathematica/book/section-2.6.4

That's why I said in another posting that you need to understand
the evaluation / compilation model of Lisp.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: why do you choose LISP?
    ... i like lisp primarily bceause it is a functional lang. ... It is also during the early 1990s, i started to learn programing on my ... during these years i bought Mathematica (because i heard it's the ... I do not have any concrete idea what IS a language specification ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Lisp and Scheme with fewer parentheses / Mathematica??
    ... Any dummy, at our level, knew that Mathematica and lisp have different ... programer, even with say 10 years of programing experience, chances ... functional language and one of the oldest language) ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Lisp syntax vs. Mathematica syntax
    ... Let's trying writing a Lisp macro equivalent to Mathematica's Apply. ... In Mathematica, ... That's not what Lisp folks mean when they ... > What you are doing is not the same as other programming environments. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Whats so great about lisp?
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    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Benefits of Dynamic Typing
    ... Mathematica implements everything that you've listed from Lisp and adds ... > syntax for for representing data externally predefined ... Mathematica takes this further by allowing 2D typesetting of expressions. ...
    (comp.lang.functional)