(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
(eq? 'lisp 0)
I just read (via Jim Loy's math pages) that it took Europe approximately five centuries to adopt zero and the Hindu-Arabic numbering system. ("from about twelve hundred when Fibonacci introduced Hindu-Arabic numbers to Europe, to about seventeen hundred when they became popular").
So... Lisp has only been around since nineteen fifty-nine or so, not even five decades. We may have to wait another four hundred and fifty-four years before every programming language embraces program/data equivalence, bottom-up programming, functional programming, macros, and even parentheses.
As Jim points out, many people exposed to the new system may not have seen the advantages. Their existing zero-less numbering systems suited their existing needs just fine. This argument struck me as familiar.
Plus ça change... (plus c'est la même chose).
I just read (via Jim Loy's math pages) that it took Europe approximately five centuries to adopt zero and the Hindu-Arabic numbering system. ("from about twelve hundred when Fibonacci introduced Hindu-Arabic numbers to Europe, to about seventeen hundred when they became popular").
So... Lisp has only been around since nineteen fifty-nine or so, not even five decades. We may have to wait another four hundred and fifty-four years before every programming language embraces program/data equivalence, bottom-up programming, functional programming, macros, and even parentheses.
As Jim points out, many people exposed to the new system may not have seen the advantages. Their existing zero-less numbering systems suited their existing needs just fine. This argument struck me as familiar.
Plus ça change... (plus c'est la même chose).
Labels: lispy
Comments on “(eq? 'lisp 0)”:
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There's hope yet. Dynamic languages are increasing in popularity. A comment on one of my O'Reilly blog entries suggested that Ruby may be the gateway drug to CLOS.
People are unlikely to adopt, um, "weirdo" language idioms for a vague promise of increased power, but if they rub shoulders with enough new ideas (meta-programming, for example) then some of the weirdness may go away.
Maybe there needs to be a super-useful DSL-based development library, written perhaps in Ruby, that "just happens" to use parantheses. Not *too* many, just enough so that they no longer look so alien.
James
People are unlikely to adopt, um, "weirdo" language idioms for a vague promise of increased power, but if they rub shoulders with enough new ideas (meta-programming, for example) then some of the weirdness may go away.
Maybe there needs to be a super-useful DSL-based development library, written perhaps in Ruby, that "just happens" to use parantheses. Not *too* many, just enough so that they no longer look so alien.
James
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