COMMON LISP is the PL/I of LISPs

[Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>]

    Date: 3 Mar 1986  15:37 EST (Mon)
    From: "Stewart M. Clamen" <SMC%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>


	From: Seth Steinberg <sas at BBN-VAX.ARPA>
	To:   scheme at mit-mc.ARPA
	Re:   COMMON LISP is the PL/I of LISPs

	Actually, I think COMMON LISP will do better than PL/I did as a usable
	standard.  Personally I think Scheme is the APL of LISPs.  It's great
	for writing clever, unreadable hacks.  Actually, the analogy could go:

    I take exception to that.  Unlike APL, Scheme uses the popular set of
    characters known as ASCII, which is a superset of the English
    characters, and is therefore quite readable.

I believe that the APL character set is also a superset of "English"
characters, except for not having lower case, which shouldn't matter.
--Guy