Not sure if it's sarcasm or not... [LWN.net]

Not sure if it's sarcasm or not...

Posted Nov 18, 2011 8:10 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: There are big difference... by deepfire
Parent article: Interview with Andrew Tanenbaum (LinuxFr.org)

Extra points for Lisp being called a "pointless complication".

If you meant it as sarcasm then you missed the point. Sure, there are things which Lisp does better and simpler then other solutions. But when you try to shoehorn the whole world in Lisp - this is pointless complication.

You clearly know enough about the history of ideas in computing.

I know enough to know that In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

It funny to see intelligent people like Niklaus Wirth, Andrew Tanenbaum and others do a "novice error" again and again. If you want to introduce something new you better have the contingency plan ready which will introduce your creation as piecemeal replacement for something. Time for "flag day revolutions" have come and gone. Even if you introduce something "brand new" you either need to introduce a way to bring legacy code on your platform - as Android did when it introduced NDK, or you can see it eventually rejected (it may survive as niche solution, of course: LISP certainly did).

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Not sure if it's sarcasm or not...

Posted Nov 18, 2011 8:35 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]

>> Extra points for Lisp being called a "pointless complication".

> Sure, there are things which Lisp does better and simpler then other
> solutions. But when you try to shoehorn the whole world in Lisp -
> this is pointless complication.

Have you experienced a Lisp machine environment?

You judge things so easily..

Not sure if it's sarcasm or not...

Posted Nov 19, 2011 3:18 UTC (Sat) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Mentioning it doesn't really bring anything.. it's already been mentioned.

If you have relevant information as to why lisp machines really were a great approach, offering something that other solutions that won cannot provide, especially in a practical way... by all means do share it.