ANSI specification revision. - Page 2

#16

09-24-08, 11:18 AM

philip.armitage

On 24 Sep, 10:33, macoovacany <macoovac> wrote:

> I think the answer is too many choices.
> Why are there so many choices?
> Because there is not 'only one' choice. There are many choices.

I think choices do still exist in other languages but Lisp has more of
a culture of research and discovery.

Of course, practicality does bubble certain solutions to the surface:
most people use ASDF for example. It's not part of the standard but
it's sufficient that it's become de facto. At least until someone
innovates again and produces something better.

Maybe if people wrote more code than blog posts it would happen in
other areas too :-)

#17

09-24-08, 06:16 PM

Kenny

macoovacany wrote:
> How hard is it to revise an ANSI specification?
>
> Also, if it was easy enough, what would some other drawbacks be to
> revising the spec for CL?
>
> The discussions around [..]
> and others bring into focus this question.

Yikes! How do you get from library support to core language revision???

I guess what you might be thinking is that having a library means the
language now has new keywrods and data structures? Yikes!

I think you need to go out and come back in again. Better yet, STFU and
get to work on a new Lisp library like all the other hard-working
application programmers around... hang on... ok, never mind.

kt

#18

09-24-08, 06:47 PM

Don Geddis

macoovacany <macoovacany> wrote on Wed, 24 Sep 2008:
> On Sep 24, 1:53 am, Don Geddis <d> wrote:
>> The point of the article is that the language is great, the spec is great
>> ... but for social and practical and libraries and popularity reasons, the
>> author believes Lisp is a poor choice for web programming.
>
> Yes. And why would lisp have social and practical and libraries and
> popularity reasons to make it poor choice for web programming?
> I think the answer is too many choices.
> Why are there many choices?
> Because CL is a Spec, not a single implementation.

We could debate this point, but even if true, how does changing the spec
help at all?

> Can we revise the spec?
> The original spec cost ~400K, when turnovers for companies were ~500M.
> Those figures aren't happening now. Neither is a Spec revision.
> Should we revise the spec.

I still don't see how that would help at all, for what you claimed the
problem to be: "too many implementations".

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don
How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a
tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. -- Abraham Lincoln

#19

09-26-08, 11:35 AM

macoovacany

> Yikes! How do you get from library support to core language revision???

With the single language providers, effectively library support is
core language. Different to CL with it's spec.

> I guess what you might be thinking is that having a library means the
> language now has new keywrods and data structures? Yikes!

Effectively. Although I know it's tricky for language designers to
draw the line between core language and library (complex numbers,
etc). However, when there's a single provider, it doesn't make a
difference.

> I think you need to go out and come back in again. Better yet, STFU and

STFU: No, sometimes one has to ask for reality check. Which why I
provoked the question. Before the OP, I googled "ANSI Specification
revision" and the first link was a discussion from 1992. Thought I'd
see if opinions had changed.

> get to work on a new Lisp library like all the other hard-working
> application programmers around... hang on... ok, never mind.

Yeah... I can't think of a reason to disagree with this.

Timbo

#20

09-26-08, 11:47 AM

macoovacany

>
> > On Sep 24, 1:53 am, Don Geddis <d> wrote:
> >> The point of the article is that the language is great, the spec is great
> >> ... but for social and practical and libraries and popularity reasons, the
> >> author believes Lisp is a poor choice for web programming.
>
> > Yes. And why would lisp have social and practical and libraries and
> > popularity reasons to make it poor choice for web programming?
> > I think the answer is too many choices.
> > Why are there many choices?
> > Because CL is a Spec, not a single implementation.
>
> We could debate this point, but even if true, how does changing the spec
> help at all?

"An interesting and difficult to refute debating technique of debating
a another topic entirely."
- Andrew Denton

The question was not how does changing the spec help. It was what
would be the disadvantages. I can summarise:
1) Why?
2) It costs alot.
3) The existing libraries work better than you think.

For the sake of completeness, the advantages of revising the spec:
1) Better access for newbies.

(I'd also revise the disadvantages to include item 4:
4) Better access for newbies (who only seem interested in web
authoring.)

>
> > Can we revise the spec?
> > The original spec cost ~400K, when turnovers for companies were ~500M.
> > Those figures aren't happening now. Neither is a Spec revision.
> > Should we revise the spec.
>
> I still don't see how that would help at all, for what you claimed the
> problem to be: "too many implementations".

I prefer the term "cause" to "problem". Problem imples that something
needs to be changed.

Timbo

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