Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.indiana.edu!not-for-mail
From: dasul...@cs.indiana.edu (Damien R. Sullivan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: What's happening in the Lisp world today?
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 20:52:44 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Murray's Mud Minions
Lines: 32
Message-ID: <bilq2s$siv$1@hood.uits.indiana.edu>
References: <df045d93.0308261224.7770a33c@posting.google.com> <6tf3b.19116$8i2.11528@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net> <87n0dub6c5.fsf@darkstar.cartan> <a3995c0d.0308281032.4b2f0d7d@posting.google.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cownose.cs.indiana.edu
X-Trace: hood.uits.indiana.edu 1062103964 29279 129.79.246.164 (28 Aug 2003 20:52:44 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: news-admin@indiana.edu
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 20:52:44 +0000 (UTC)
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999)

heli...@mindspring.com (Rayiner Hashem) wrote:
>> No.  Scheme willfuly departed from almost anything that might be
>> called ``Lisp tradition´´, and the result doesn't look anything
>> like a Lisp to me.  If a pityful toy language like Scheme would
>> be considered a Lisp, I'd have to say ``I'd like to program this
>> in Lisp (but not Scheme.  If the only `Lisp´ option is Scheme,
>> let's talk about Java instead)´´ all the time.
>
>I'm confused. I hear this all the time on c.l.l, but there are never
>accompanying examples. Why is CL so different from Scheme? Is the
>CL/Scheme split kind of like the C/C++ split? Is the programming style
>in CL *that* different from the programming style in Scheme, and if
>so, how?

Perhaps more importantly: are the differences between Scheme and CL so much
greater than the differences among various Lisps?  The syntax split is bigger
than in C/C++ -- C is a subset of C++, whereas useful programs don't hop
between CL and Scheme without work.  But I think that was true of older Lisps
too.

Scheme did diverge from other Lisps in using lexical scoping, as did T.  Then
it got picked by Common Lisp and all the dynamic scoped Lisps are dead except
for e-lisp and lush.  (Well, and maybe others I haven't heard of.)  (lush is
dynamic in interpreted mode, lexical in compiled mode, to fend off
nitpickers.)  And the e-lisp people talk about moving to CL or Scheme.  So
here Scheme diverged and got followed.

I think some people in the Scheme world questioned whether macros were
necessary, and macros seem an essential part of the full Lisp experience, but
they're part of the Scheme standard now, so.

-xx- Damien X-)