Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: A Dylan implemented on Common Lisp
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Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 19:28:18 GMT
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In article <3jtq5b$e65@newsbf02.news.aol.com> paulweiss@aol.com (PaulWeiss) writes:
>Well, even unreconstructed paren-lovers can look forward to a new
>language.  I don't feel particularly personally threatened by a hopeful
>new experiment, though I certainly have my crotchety preferences.  

I like a number of different languages.  Dylan isn't especially
interesting to me unless it becomes a practical alternative to C++.
Unfortunately, it's taking so long for Dylan to get going that
I'm not optimistic.  Meanwhile, and also unfortunately, Dylan has
become another catalyst for criticism of Lisp.

> Before
>the weapons come out, however, it might be wise to remember the old saw:
>"All babies are born beautiful."  
>
>Even CL had its sort of beauty, which was the possibility of a Lisp
>dialect in a mainstream use, not just for AI labs.  There was a good bit
>of excitement surrounding the process of defining CL, along with the
>inevitable ohmygawd recognitions of the necessity of making best choices
>among ugly alternatives.  That excitement carried on to an ANSI standard
>and DOD approval, which may not be metrics of elegance, but certainly are
>of serious intent.

Common Lisp is not as bad as people like to suggest.  In many ways,
it's a cleaner language than the major Lisps that preceded it.  The
idea that some earlier, nicer language was compromised by a process
of "design by committee" and political log-rolling does not really 
hold up.  (This is not, of course, to say that politics was not
involved.)

True, the language produced by X3J13 was more cluttered, with more
odd corners and byways, than the language of CLtL I.  But it was
also better in many ways as well.  Anyone who could start over would
clean things up in various ways, but when we look at the resulting
languages (chiefly EuLisp and Dylan), a great deal has been retained.
Indeed, I was noticed this strongly when reading the Dylan Interim
reference manual.  There was more of Common Lisp than I'd expected,
and, apart from the syntax, the differences were just the sort I'd
expect in a post-CL Lisp: more thoroughly integrated object system;
no eval; modules; things to help compilation (sealing); less emphasis
on support for redefinition; object-oriented iteration; simplified,
generalized and more OO treatment of "sequences".

-- jd
