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Re: s-exprs + prototypes



On Mittwoch, Juni 25, 2003, at 10:20  Uhr, Michael St . Hippolyte wrote:

> Perhaps, but the building blocks that Lisp uses are a particular
> kind of building block, following a particular paradigm.

Huh? What is the paradigm that is inherent in s-expressions?

> And there's
> nothing special about being able to construct other paradigms out of
> Lisp's building blocks -- the building blocks of any Turing-complete
> language have the same capability.  Indeed, one of the main appeals of
> object systems is their suitability for modeling other systems.

Turing completeness is a red herring. Programming languages are user 
interfaces for computers, so the usability aspects are by far the most 
important. If Turing completeness were the most important we could have 
stopped research with Turing machines (so to speak).

Lisp macros allow you to make the language fit any paradigm.

> I do agree that Lisp's approach is more fundamental than OO as
> generally implemented.  But it's not so fundamental as to be beyond
> paradigm.  And, I'm convinced, OO can be made more fundamental too,
> if implemented in a functional rather than imperative style.

Functional programming is just another paradigm. I am not talking about 
specific paradigms here.

Yes, I think that Lisp is beyond paradigm. The only way to make other 
languages as flexible as Lisp is to include a macro facility - and 
macros don't have anything to do with specific paradigms. Macros are 
purely about changing the user interface.


Pascal