Re: A Dylan implemented on Common Lisp

[jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)]

In article <3jgef0$fnt@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> sef@CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Fahlman) writes:
>
>   If the CL->Dylan mapping isn't 100%, maybe we could
>   push hard to get Dylan changed so it would be.  
>
>Push all you like.  It won't happen.  Having a Dylan-in-CL for some
>transitional period is not a good enough reason to preserve all the
>accumulated small irritations that have built up in Lisp over the
>decades.

Contrary to the impression created by Scott's anti-Lisp propaganda,
Common Lisp eliminated most of the small irritations that had built
up over the years.  (E.g. interpreters using different scope rules
than compilers)  Some of the remaining "small irritations" (e.g.
nil being false) are not universally considered irritations.
In any case, a Dylan-in-CL can handle nil vs #f (Scott's example),
as Schemes-in-CL have shown.

Note that Scott Fahlman was one of the designers of Common Lisp
and had plenty of opportunities to eliminate any irritations that
irritated him.

-- jd