Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

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It's not my definition. I just happen to agree with a lot of others, many who don't post here. It's also not new. I just remind people of a view, you might never heard of, because you never were involved in Lisp meetings, Lisp conferences or Lisp standardization efforts. Lisp is old, and many younger people don't know much of its history and evolution.

See for example Pitman, Lambda the ultimate political party

http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html

Published in Lisp Pointers (a regular Lisp magazine, published in the 80s/90s) in 1994.

> Lisp users are accustomed to being able to write programs that take program texts in different dialects (or older versions of the same dialect) and process them to bring them up to date. No single common linguistic feature supports this. And yet, Lisp users are accustomed to expecting that there will be some way to accommodate the needs of compatibility and translation.

That's is what makes Lisp, in my opinion. Sharing of code, implementations, libraries, books, tools, ...

A language spectrum serves a diverse community. It is not a dead body of abstract and vague principles. It grows out of sharing and communication.

Kent knows the Lisp and Scheme landscape very well. He worked as developer, in standardisation efforts (both Lisp and Scheme), as an implementor, editor, author, etc.

I read Pittman. The thing is, the Scheme community may not be able to share code directly, but we are able to, and often do, share ideas. In addition, many Schemers are active in the CL community and vice versa, like Pittman. Many of the same people were involved in the standardization effort, and the creation of both.

A language spectrum does indeed serve as a diverse commiunity. One us Schemers are a part of.

I know my history, I just disagree with you.

His name is Pitman. Kent Pitman.

> Many of the same people were involved in the standardization effort, and the creation of both.

I doubt that this is the case for R7RS.

> The thing is, the Scheme community may not be able to share code directly, but we are able to, and often do, share ideas.

That's my point. There are few ideas shared and no code. Today the various spinoffs of Lisp have their own communities. I don't say that it is bad or good, it's just the way it is. That's not only the fate of a programming language family, it also happens in other areas, that domains are divided into groups which have problems to understand each other and which are not able to track or use the work of other groups. The groups have different preferences and their topic gets an independent life.

Sorry. I always get names wrong.

As for r7rs, Sussman, at the very least, was on the commitee. Several other Lispers as well, IIRC, but it would take too long to check.

All the Lisps have different communities. That's why the languages are different. There's some overlap, but if the communities were identical than all the languages would be the same.

But then, you could say the same of C, C++, and Java, which don't all share code, but are all in the same family.

Sussman is a Schemer.

To be fair, he's done some lisp work. But that's true enough.

Steele was on the commitee for many years, although not this one.

I'd give you a list of CLers on the commitee, but I honestly can't dig through 12 people's online profiles just to prove a point right now.

I still don't see anything here which indicates to me that I should give a shit about NewLisp being called "NewLisp", or about referring to CL/Scheme/Racket/whatever as "Lisps".

Kaz's point is that NewLisp is slightly confusing, but it's not, not incredibly, so I don't see that point. I think terminology's important, but that particular instance isn't. As for why people complain about calling things Lisps, it's a mystery to me.

Now complaints about calling Racket Scheme, OTOH, I get. Scheme has a specification which Racket doesn't comply to: they changed the name for a reason when they started to deviate. Calling Racket Scheme is like seeing a language that's kind of similar to C and just calling it C.

Are you expecting a sound technical argument why designers should show respect at least for the sources where they cribbed most of their core ideas? Not piss into the pool where they learned to swim (even if merely the "doggy paddle")?

Sorry, I don't have that argument.

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