[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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