Ask Kent M. Pitman About Lisp, Scheme And More

Kent M. Pitman has been programming in Scheme and Lisp, and contributing to the design of those languages, for a long time -- 24 years. He was a technical contributor and an international representative for the ANSI subcommittee that standardized Common Lisp, and in that capacity directed the design of Lisp's error system. Scheme may be better known as a teaching language, but both Scheme and Lisp have applications (as any Emacs user knows) that go far beyond this. Now's your chance to ask him about the pros and cons of those two languages, circa 2001 A.D. Kent also has an interesting, ambivalent take on Free software that's worth noting in an atmosphere where complex issues are often oversimplified and radicalized. Since he's someone who's helped develop standards, this is perhaps a timely issue on which to probe his opinion. It's also a good time to get acquainted with things he's written, which might interest you just as much as his programming. (Soap opera parodies, anyone?) So suggest questions for Kent below (please, one per post) -- we'll pass along the highest-rated ones for him to answer, and Kent will get back soon with his answers.

Comments

Re:Lisp becoming more used

[Anonymous Coward]

No way, Lisp is way outdated, and it isn't even a pure functional language. People will want to use Haskell, Erlang, or Goatsex instead.

Why learn lisp -- deeper reasons needed

[billr]

I've read some interesting articles about lisp, and I'm interested in learning to some extent.

One problem though is that most people stop at saying that feature X (which no other language can do) is really great, and stop there. Never having used feature X, I don't have enough context to say, yes that will help me solve problems more easily.

For example, somebody claims that LISP is better because a lisp program can write code as it goes, or something like that. Having never had that as an option I can't see circumstances where I'd want to do that.

Could you please describe in some detail the top features of lisp and why they are GOOD THINGS?

Also, I promise to not make fun of parenthesis if you don't state that infix notation is one of the reasons that lisp is good. ;)

Re:Too damn dumb

[SimHacker]

Most people are just too damn dumb to recognise how great Lisp is.

The bias against Lisp is based on the simple fact that the first word that springs into most peoples pointy little heads when they hear the word "Lisp" is: "Gay". And that scares off all the homophobic repressed closet queens, which includes a large percentage of the computer industry. Especially Perl programmers, who use Perl as a means of expressing their manhood and covering up their repressed homosexual tendencies.

-Don