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Re: C# is not Dylan (was: Re: C# : The new language from M$)
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Neel Krishnaswami would say:
>Jens Kilian <Jens_Kilian@agilent.com> wrote:
>> "Michael T. Richter" <mtr@ottawa.com> writes:
>> > That's the first time I've seen someone describe a profusion of parentheses
>> > as "clean".
>>
>> Hint: Write down a grammar for Lisp. Write down a grammar for Dylan (or C,
>> or C++, etc.). Compare their sizes.
>
>FTR, I disagree with Michael, but your response doesn't have the
>answer you apparently think it does: Dylan is the smallest of all of
>these -- Dylan plus its special forms is substantially less complex
>than Common Lisp and its special forms.
That's an interesting claim; I suspect that down that road lies some
unfortunately impressive flame wars, to go alongside whatever insights
come up.
>Now to profit maximally from this observation, I recommend comparing
>the two with a critical eye, keeping in mind that both languages were
>designed by smart and knowledgeable people. I learned a lot from this
>very exercise; the two languages are close enough in design space that
>their differences reveal a lot about the fine structure of language
>design. (Haskell vs. ML is another good pairing. I haven't found
>anything to compare Smalltalk to yet, though.)
Unfortunately, "comparative programming languages" tends towards
threads that resemble "capitalism versus communism." While there
are probably some useful insights in such discussions, it is unlikely
that the discussion will remain grounded in any common understandings,
as there are _dramatically_ different attitudes towards them. There
are enough "bigots" out there, whether relating to political systems
or to programming languages, that the discussion is likely to go down
in flames...
--
aa454@freenet.carleton.ca - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/linux.html>
Flashlights are cases for holding dead batteries.
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