Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
From: cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer)
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Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
References: <36p4rb$6gd@relay.tor.hookup.net> <Cx5vqF.5E3@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <36ui4a$3k2@relay.tor.hookup.net> <CxBJ7o.9Kv@festival.ed.ac.uk> <CxMo10.514@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 19:09:40 +0000
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In article <CxMo10.514@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
           simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk "Simon Brooke" writes:

> This thread has been rumbling on for some time, and the longer it
> rumbles the more it bothers me. In it, various people (Jeff Dalton,
> Bob Hutchinson, and the implausibly named Cyber Surfer amongst others)
> have been arguing about whether C is easier to learn than LisP because
> it more closely models hardware. Guys, what's hardware?

I haven't been wondering that. I was merely sucked into this thread
from another. I'm not interested in comparisons between Lisp and C.
Such discussions often bore me. I'm far more interested in issues
which are specific to Lisp. I'm certainly don't want to discuss the
hardware "model" that programmers learn, as I feel the model could
just as easily be an abstract machine nothing like the actual hardware.

C could be relevant to this thread while we discuss the way that the
first computer language(s) we learn help define the "model" we use
for the computer. As I've said, I originally used Basic, altho I later
learned that the hardware was very different. I just had no way of
knowing that when I began programming.

Some Lisp tutorials provide a Lisp interpreter at some point (like
the "Lisp in Lisp" chapter in Winston and Horn), and that might help
give a new programmer a model for the language (not the machine) which
is defined using the language itself.

I remember that Smalltalk-80 was treated in a similar way, in one of
the Xerox books. The ST80 definition is not just a language, tho. It
defined the way an "virtual machine" behaved. This was done using a
virtual machine written in Smalltalk, instead of C, Pascal, etc.
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