Why don't people like lisp?

[james anderson]

Andrew Dalke wrote:
> 
> Kaz Kylheku:
> > Ah, but in Lisp, this is commonly done at *compile* time.
> 
> Compile vs. runtime is an implementation issue.  Doesn't
> change expressive power, only performance.  Type inferencing
> suggests that there are other ways to get speed-ups from
> dynamic languages.
> 
> > Moreover,
> > two or more domain-specific languages can be mixed together, nested in
> > the same lexical scope, even if they were developed in complete
> > isolation by different programmers.
> 
> We have decidedly different definitions of what a "domain-specific
> language" means.  To you it means the semantics expressed as
> an s-exp.  To me it means the syntax is also domain specific.  Eg,
> Python is a domain specific language where the domain is
> "languages where people complain about scope defined by
> whitespace." ;)

that is an inaccurate projection of what "domain-specific" means in a
programming environment like lisp. perhaps it says more about what it would
mean in a programming environemtn like python?  if the author would take the
example of one of the recent discussions which flew by here, e.weitz's
cl-interpol, it would be interesting to read how
> 
> Yes, one can support Python in Lisp as a reader macro -- but
> it isn't done because Lispers would just write the Python out
> as an S-exp.  But then it wouldn't be Python, because the domain
> language *includes*domain*syntax*.

it exemplifies "writing the [ domain-specific language ] out as an s-exp.

> 
> In other words, writing the domain language as an S-exp
> is a short cut to make it easier on the programmer, and not
> on the domain specialist.  Unless the domain is programming.
> And you know, very few of the examples of writing a domain
> specific language in Lisp have been for tasks other than
> programming.

the more likely approach to "python-in-lisp" would be a
reader-macro/tokenizer/parser/translater which compiled the
"python-domain-specific-language" into s-expressions.

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