41–50 of 60 posts
It's because some people don't like s-expressions, so they've been making up a bunch of other stuff.
My theory: people who don't like s-expressions don't get programming; Thus, everyone who gets programming and is exposed to lisp becomes a lisp programmer, and people who suck at programming are left out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My theory: people who don't like s-expressions don't get programming; Thus, everyone who gets programming and is exposed to lisp becomes a lisp programmer, and people who suck at programming are left out.
I know many people who are counterexamples to your theory. Languages like Perl and Python have a strong advantage in libraries. If you don't need the things that only Lisp can do, there's not as much of a reason to use it.
Not that I completely agree with the GP's point.
The problem with standardization is that you iron out all of the innovations. Certain language constructs are simply better for certain tasks. Lisp is built for recursion so it's great with lists. Object-oriented languages in theory are great for modularity and maintainability. Granted all these aspects have a lot to do with the coder in addition to the language. If all languages required you to manage memory as in C…
I don't mean to be pedantic, but the 'Java is slow' thing simply isn't true anymore. It certainly used to be slow back in the day, but it's actually pretty good these days. From what I've heard, programmers at Google put it in the same ballpark as C++. This brings me to another point.. the choice of programming language often has more to do with image and branding as opposed to actual technical merit. That's why we k…
A better question is why doesn't everyone in the world speak Esparanto.
Or even, why isn't every language written using the latin alphabet? To which an answer might be, latin doesn't support certain sounds, can't represent tones... and if it did, it would break chinese language interoperability.
It's because some people don't like s-expressions, so they've been making up a bunch of other stuff.
My theory: people who don't like s-expressions don't get programming; Thus, everyone who gets programming and is exposed to lisp becomes a lisp programmer, and people who suck at programming are left out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and often times new syntax is created to support features in a language... ...and if you have the same syntax for all languages then what is the difference? All languages would just be extensions of the same basic language if the syntax is the same. It is a good question though. Why have more than 3 or 4 programming languages at all?
We have programming languages because people make them. The only way to have only 3 or 4 is to eradicate all but those and stop people from making more. However if we did that, I have a feeling we would now choose 1 or 2 that wouldn't exist if someone had done the same thing a decade ago.
A better question is why doesn't everyone in the world speak Esparanto.
Because it has to complete with English which is already a world language(at least in the business world)