[CM] Notes from the Metalevel - review link broken ; relevancy of text
Dave Phillips
dlphillips at woh.rr.com
Tue Oct 19 06:52:47 PDT 2010
Mario Lang wrote:
> Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> writes:
>
>
>> Terrence Brannon wrote:
>>
>>> * I was looking at the TOC of this text and it speaks about Lisp
>>> programming, but the latest implementation of CM uses Scheme. Is
>>> Lisp meant in a more general sense?
>>>
>>>
>> Lisp has various "dialects". Scheme is one of them.
>>
>
> I am not sure I agree with you. Its like saying "C has
> several dialects, C++ is one of them." There are a few
> fundamental differences between Scheme and Lisp which I'd consider
> different enough to not call them dialects of each other. True they
> both use prefix-notation and parenthesis, but there are really
> quite a few differences in the details.
>
> First of all, in Scheme functions and values do not have a separate
> namespace, in Lisp a function can have the same name as a variable.
>
> Additionally, in Scheme you only have lexical-scoping,
> in Lisp you have lexical scoping by default with an option
> to define dynamic scope for specific variables.
>
> And so on, I guess I am getting into a language ware here :-)
>
> I am underlining this because I learnt both languages,
> and I very well remember how they both felt fundamentally
> different to program with.
>
>
Hi Mario,
I cheerfully defer to your experience. My impressions are based on a
limited exposure Lisp and its progeny through experiments with the
"Common" family of software - Scheme and Lisp with CM - and Bill
Schottstaedt's SND (Guile there, IIRC).
I'm afraid I'm strictly an amateur and an unworthy foe in any sort of
language war. :)
Best,
dp
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