If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp. Python copies even features that many Lisp hackers consider to be mistakes. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958.But I think there is another clear sign of the evolution towards lisp. The increasing popularity, especially in the eclipse community, of code generators. Since reading 'Practical Common Lisp', it would seem silly to invent huge blobs of code generating code in Java, when the world already has the greatest code generating tool, the lisp macro.
Friday, May 11, 2007
the evolution towards lisp
I was discussing the "all programming languages evolve towards lisp" theory with a colleague recently. Paul Graham explains it quite well:
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