Re: on racket and other Lisps

On 1/4/2024, George Neuner wrote:

Racket is derived from Scheme (which also is NOT Lisp).

Racket evolved from PLT Scheme - which WAS a Scheme.

That's not even a proper sentence.

Better:

Racket evolved from PLT Scheme, which was a Scheme.


Didier Verna:

The European Lisp Symposium is a premier forum for the
discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design,
implementation, and application of any of the Lisp dialects,
including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Clojure, Racket,
ACL2, AutoLisp, ISLISP, Dylan, SKILL, Hy, Shen, Carp, Janet,
uLisp, Picolisp, Gamelisp, TXR, and so on.

Thomas Bushnell wrote:

The first post to comp.lang.lisp was in November of 1986; _Common
Lisp, The Language_ was published in 1984.

 
Oh, that's just an artifact of the Great Renaming, which was 1986-7.
comp.lang.lisp is the new name of the old net.lang.lisp.  The first
message was there can be found at
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&group=net.lang.lisp&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as
_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=10&as_maxm=6&as_maxy=1982&selm=anews.Aucb
arpa.997
 
And is dated 1982-03-27 23:56:29 PST.
 
It's by John Foderaro.  The first sentence is:
 
"The net.lang.lisp newsgroup is for the discussion of any and all lisp
dialects."

The following code snippet runs under both Gauche Scheme and
SBCL, and the output is identical:

(let* ((step1 2)
       (step2 (cons (* step1 1000) 47)))
  (do ((i 1 (+ i step1))
       (j 40 (+ j (case (mod i 3)
                    ((0 1) (car step2))
                    ((2) (cdr step2)))))
       (sum 0 (+ sum (cond ((= 0 (mod j 2)) j)
                           ((= 3 i) 500)
                           ('else (* i 2.125))))))
    ((> i 22) (values sum j))))

 ===>
36664.375
16181

Does this tend to prove that Scheme is not a Lisp?


Paul Graham, May 2001:

A hacker's language is terse and hackable. Common Lisp is not.

The good news is, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp.


Paul Graham:

I consider Loop one of the worst flaws in CL, and an example
to be borne in mind by both macro writers and language designers.


From: John Foderaro <jkf@unspamx.franz.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: the "loop" macro
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 10:51:26 -0700

I'm not trying to join a debate on loop.  I just wanted to present
the other side of [the issue so that] the intelligent people can
then weigh the arguments on both sides.
 
I'm not suggesting that loop can be fixed either by adding
parenthesis or coming up with ways of indenting it to make it
understandable.  It's a lost cause.
 
...
 
Another great example from kmp:
 
=== from kmp
 
For example, you might think
 (loop with i = (random 100) for x from 1 to 10 do (print (list i x)))
and
 (loop for  i = (random 100) for x from 1 to 10 do (print (list i x)))
meant the same in English, [but they don't do the same thing in loop]
 
=== end kmp
 
loop lulls you into thinking that you understand the program since
you understand English.   Make no mistake about it, loop is its
own language.  If you use it you condem everyone who reads the
code to also learn the loop language.

Those who program in CL (COBOL-Like) are using the Loop
language, which is not a dialect of Lisp.  Furthermore, they
are forcing those who read their code to learn the Loop
language.

Let's just say that Scheme is a better Lisp
than CL (COBOL-Like) is.