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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper
Message-ID: <1997Apr9.113931.8322@wavehh.hanse.de>
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: '(a (cons tructive organization))
References: <rcybba5k9c.fsf@redwood.skiles.gatech.edu> <199703271612.LAA06438@menhaden.adi.com> <s6y208um0ey.fsf_-_@aalh02.alcatel.com.au> <334412fb.7359993@news.demon.co.uk> <5i7euq$cmg@engnews2.Eng.Sun.COM> <5iacot$sd7$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 97 11:39:31 GMT
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ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:

>ouster@tcl.eng.sun.com (John Ousterhout) writes:

>>2. Many people objected to the fact that their favorite programming
>>   was left out of the white paper.  Yes, I have heard of Scheme,
>>   Smalltalk, ML, etc.  I left these languages out because they
>>   didn't seem particularly relevant for the discussion.  No offense
>>   intended...

>Lisp having been used as a scripting language for a lot longer than TCL,
>it was a *relevant* omission.  (Yes, I have used Lisp as my command and
>scripting language, and yes, it was before TCL.)

Isn't the most important thing about Lisp (in relevance in this
discussion) that it can be used both for overhead-free systems
programming *and* for scripting/glueing with very dense syntactic
abstractions?

It approaches this ability by using a syntax some people don't like,
but those who do usually don't have to complain about overly verbose
code in glueing components and if they use a decent compiler (and
understood the declaration syntax of Common Lisp), they usually don't
have to use a second language to get overhead-free machine code (and I
mean overhead-*free*, see my home page for an example).

There are reasons not like Common Lisp, but it is a clear example that
using two different languages are not a requirement, even if you don't
accept overhead either in source code or in running code.

Ousterhout may have left off Lisp in his discussion because he
considers it to be irrelevant to most users in pratice (which I
don't), but a paper that disusses the need for a second language
should at least note approaches that avoid this requirement, even when
the paper goes on rejecting this approach for some reason.

I think that is why especially Lisp users entered the barricades in
this discussion. A paper like this can't discuss every language in
existence, but it failed to discuss alternative approaches to the
fundamental problem. That makes the paper look like marketing material
instead of useful technical information, although I have no doubt that
Ousterhout is more serious than this.

Martin
-- 
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Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
