I am an old LISPer (I only hack emacs code now) and I try to avoid waxing
nostalgic. Nostalgia covers a host of ills. BUT (and you knew I’d say
that) I have never had such a grand experience like developing with LISP.
Someone else said it in this thread and it bears repeating: LISP is so
malleable. It can be functional, data-oriented, object-oriented, and
anything in between. You can think and the code flows from the fingertips.
The freedom to just throw in some extra functionality or hook on an extra
bit of data that ends up being code… It still boggles the mind.
I know you didn’t ask for compilers but I must shed a tear that nothing like
the Symbolics LISP environment was repeated for mainstream work. In '85, I
could be debugging code in a visual, graphical editor, hit a problem, view
the bad code, and replace the errant code (with compiled or interpreted
code) and keep going right from where it erred. I’ve seen nothing like it
since. Talk about agile…
Am I waxing nostalgic? Okay, I confess, guilty as charged. I guess its
true what they say about first love (I had already seen COBOL, PASCAL,
FORTRAN, PL1, etc. I did NOT love them)…
I’m brand-spanking new to Ruby, but it is looking awfully promising! Now if
only I can arrange to develop some real code with it (I work in a very
conservative company).
Drew
···
-----Original Message-----
From: web2ed@yahoo.com [mailto:web2ed@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 7:18 PM
To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Subject: Python the new Lisp, what about Ruby then?
I’ve been reading that Python is the new lisp.
For those Lispers in the crowd, how does Ruby compare with Lisp? I’m not
concerned about the compilers and interpreters, but more about the samantic
limitations or freedoms of each.
I know Matz hacked on Lisp before inventing Ruby, so I can only imagine that
if Lisp had something worth holding onto Ruby would certainly provide it.
//ed