Re: [tlug] "Go Considered Harmful"

["Curt J. Sampson" <cjs@example.com>]

On 2020-09-02 06:38 +0200 (Wed), Josh Glover wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 at 05:34, Curt J. Sampson <cjs@example.com> wrote:
>
> BTW, though I keep bringing up Lisp, I do not think is the Best Language
> Ever or anything like that.
>
> I'll go on record saying it is. And even if it isn't, as you later point
> out, it lets you construct the Best Language Ever for the problem you're
> solving. ;)

Well, not really. Lack of a good type system really hurts it. And most Lisp
dialects (Scheme being a notable exception) have a lot of baggage that
seems to me not really to justify its weight, such as the famous `DO` and,
arguably, separate namespaces for function variables and non-function
variables. (Clearly I fall on the Scheme side in this argument. :-))

And sometimes the Best Langauge Ever for what you want to do is not
directly expressing an AST.

> I don't have anything of value to add to this really interesting thread,
> but no Lisp fans were popping up to mention how awesome it is, so...

Yeah, Lisp does have certain awesome things. It looks to me like the macro
system in Lisp works better than what's available for Haskell, for example,
and there doesn't seem to be any easy way around that.

I'd expected Steve to come in on the Lisp side of things, but it appears he
may have gone to the Dark Side of "ALGOL-like or nothing." :-)

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch