Re: A Dylan implemented on Common Lisp

[schumach@sybase.com (Lee Schumacher)]

In article <D5345w.3xC@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
|> 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

I'm sorry, but you have no standing to criticize Fahlman here.  First of
all, CL was largely design by commitee, and no one had any absolute power
over it.  Secondly, if anyone did have that power it was Guy Steele, who
wrote the manual, and not Scott.  Thirdly, Scott has devoted years of his
life to cmu cl, which is one of the most complete and robust lisps ever
seen and is free to all.  Have you made even 1% of that contribution
to lisp world ?  I don't think so.  Finally, Dylan is not public domain -
its owned by Apple.  He doesn't make the decisions, and the opinions
of the lisp world are not sufficiently important to affect them ...

 Lee.
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