From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why Isn't Lisp a Mainstream Language?
Summary: just seeing how far an analogy can be stretched
Date: 26 Jan 93 13:41:16 GMT

:: From: SWM@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Scott McKay)
:: Message-ID: <19930120191159.1.SWM@SUMMER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> 
:: From: SWM@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com (Scott McKay)
:: In what way does Lisp "push down so hard" on morphology?

: From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
: Message-ID: <1993Jan21.230642.18561@netlabs.com>
: One form to rule them all,
: One form to find them,
: One form to bring them all
: And in the darkness bind them.
: In the land of machinery, where the symbols lie.

No.  No, I'm sorry, but you've gotten it all wrong.

Lisp is one of the original three elven-rings, untainted by Sauron's
direct touch.  It is the Ring of Symbols, most often called the Ring of
Lists.  The others are the Ring of Numbers (called the Ring of
Formulas) and the Ring of Bureaucratic Records (called the Ring of
Business, or the Ring of Counting Beans).

But then Sauron tricked the Practical Smiths into forging the
nine-and-ninety Fortran and Regex Variant Rings, and gave them to 
the mortal men doomed to die.  Among them, C, C++, Awk, Perl, Bliss, 
and so on.

And let us not forget the seven-and-seventy Algol Variant Rings, given
to the dwarf-lords in their halls of academia.  Pascal, Modula-II,
Oberon, and so on.  (I concentrate mainly here on the work Sauron
tricked the WirthSmith into forging.)

And then he attempted to make the One Ring, the Ring that would combine
and control the powers of all the Fortran and Algol Variant Rings,
corrupting and circumventing the Original Rings, and rendering all their
users his helpless wage-slaves.

Lucky for all of us, Sauron outsmarted himself.  So many other Beings
were forging Rings of Power along many, many other dimensions during
these troubled times, that the cross-fertilization in the Ring-Forging
business made it nearly impossible to capture all their powers in the
One Ring.  The Object Rings, the Functional Rings, the Rings of
Inference.  Ada's attempt to be all rings to all peoples largely fell
apart, and so the Original Rings, the Practical Rings, and even the
Academic Rings can nowadays be used safely without fearing the 
One Ring.

Which is as it should be, I suppose.


But notice that the Eldest Ring, Lisp, is still around after many
another has faded.  It has adapted to the advent of the Object Rings,
the Inference Rings, and even to some extent the Functional Rings.
This is something that is largely missing in the Practical Rings.  Once
a Practical Ring like Perl or TCL or C++, or even an Academic Ring like
Modula II, has been cast and decorated with their elaborate engravings
of lexical and syntactic charms (no doubt pleasing to the eye in some
ways), they seem to lose the ability to adapt and subsume 
new models of programing.

Yes, C++ is an attempt to add the power of the Object Rings to an older
Practical Ring.  And yes, TCL has had several attempts to incorporate
Object Ring powers.  But nevertheless, the Eldest Ring, with its lack
of ornamentation, is better able to reflect the job at hand in its
smooth surface, instead of being permanently carved to do the job or
jobs that were at hand once upon a time.
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp