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A better Lisp

The X3.226 standard for Common Lisp is hopefully not the be-all end-all of what Lisp is. If it were, then Lisp would rightfully be doomed.

Neither ANSI CL, nor PLT Scheme, nor Clojure, nor any variant or implementation of any Lisp language or system, has all the features that a Lisper may yearn for. Non-Lisp languages and systems even less.

Is there a will in the community to collaborate towards a better Lisp? One that would, say, embody the features so well presented by Henry Baker in his speech at ILC 2005?

http://international-lisp-conference.org/2005/speakers.html#henry_baker

Lisp used to be a focal point for language experimentation. Why is there so little experimentation in the Lisp community with such language features as support for real-time processing, efficient and extensible mix of statism and dynamism in typing or resource allocation, better module systems, better concurrency, etc.?

Is Lisp only good for old doderers, young dogmatic repeaters, and people without interest in language features that weren't solved in the 1980s?

‹ Proposal: Common Lisp memory model and threading Common Lisp's library problem ›

Experimentation

It seems to me that there is a lot of experimentation. You can look at the proceedings of previous conferences for examples.

And a lot of the experimentation is happening in the Scheme world. That's not surprising, since experimentation is mostly done by researchers, and for them, having a language that's fundamentally as simple as possible (while still being practical) is a better base for their research.

Common Lisp was never particularly intended for language experimentation. It was intended to be a workhorse language for doing artificial intelligence, software development, and whatever else the Strategic Computing Project wanted done. For these purposes, language stability, or at least stability of the underlying language in the face of new extensions, and backward compatibility, were suitable goals.

I hope that there is will in the community to collaborate towards a better Lisp, as well as enhance the situation of the existing Common Lisp.

  • By Daniel Weinreb at 03/16/2009 - 10:09
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