Re: s-exprs + prototypes

[James McCartney <address@hidden>]

On Saturday, June 21, 2003, at 03:08 AM, Michael Vanier wrote:

> For instance, I *feel* as if the
> lisp/scheme language paradigm (essentially untyped lambda calculus) is
> "more general" than the single-dispatch OO paradigm at the heart of
> Smalltalk

I don't feel that way. First of all if both are Turing complete, then 
neither is more general. So the difference is simply one of notational 
convenience. I find it more notationally convenient to use the same 
name for the same operation on different types and to be able to define 
that operation for new types later so that old code works on new types. 
Otherwise you have to use list-length and vector-length and 
string-length instead of just length.

Lisp has regular syntax and though not more general in theory, is much 
easier to manipulate than other syntax, but there is no reason the same 
syntax could not be applied to another language.

Lisp's big advantages were always lambdas and macros. Decent OO 
languages have had lambdas for a while. I want to write one with 
macros. Then I think that I'd have the big features from Lisp. That 
everything is an object can only be a benefit not a disadvantage.

-- 
--- james mccartney   james@audiosynth.com   <http://www.audiosynth.com>
SuperCollider - a real time audio synthesis programming language for 
MacOS X.