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Re: C# is not Dylan (was: Re: C# : The new language from M$)

In article <200006302139.RAA01410@life.ai.mit.edu>, Scott Ribe 
<scott_ribe@killerbytes.com> wrote:

>- Lisp programmers don't think about syntax too much (because Lisp has
> almost none), and they tend to have a much deeper understanding of the
> semantics of languages and their expression through syntax.

Hmm? I think this is simply not true. Common Lisp has a lot of syntax.

Compare for example Dylan's "define class" with Common Lisp's
"DEFCLASS". For DEFCLASS see:

http://www.xanalys.com/software_tools/reference/HyperSpec/Body/mac_defclass.html#defclass

Despite that Common Lisp groups certain source objects as lists via
parentheses, it has a ***lot*** of syntax:

- a lot of surface syntax to describe external representations of Lisp objects
  (characters, symbols, strings, numbers, arrays, lists, ...) and
  read macros with macro characters
- function application syntax with a complicated version of arglists
  (rest, key, optional, ...)
- special forms
- tons of macros which implement a lot of syntax (look at the LOOP macro)
- ...

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