From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: First draft of the Emacs website Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 10:10:20 +0100 Message-ID: <87si3a4qkj.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <87io4lem98.fsf@petton.fr> <56604A9C.7080508@gmail.com> <20151208130529.GA28682@HAL9000> <1c367763-4ba1-4c65-80d1-be1b365c3b35@default> <87lh94hde0.fsf@mbork.pl> <5e6f1674-3091-4d0e-a12d-4f86becec481@default> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1449738649 20891 80.91.229.3 (10 Dec 2015 09:10:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 09:10:49 +0000 (UTC) Cc: valentijn@linux.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, spencer@spencerboucher.com, Drew Adams , john@yates-sheets.org To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 10 10:10:48 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xFL-0002WB-79 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 10:10:43 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40059 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xFK-0003ko-A0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:10:42 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:54782) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xFB-0003jJ-F2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:10:39 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xF7-0004kS-F1 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:10:33 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:46821) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xF7-0004kI-6g; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:10:29 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:60639 helo=lola) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1a6xEy-0004Xi-CE; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 04:10:20 -0500 Original-Received: by lola (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 0EB8EDF4DA; Thu, 10 Dec 2015 10:10:20 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: (Richard Stallman's message of "Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:28:03 -0500") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:196017 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > We don't want to set Lisp up against other languages. > > We do want to get across what it offers that benefits > > an editor and environment such as Emacs. > > Yes we do, to some extent. The Emacs web site should say this: > > Lisp is the most powerful and elegant of programming languages. If > you want to see how powerful and elegant a programming language can > be, you need to learn Lisp. It will give you standard for measuring > other languages. It's more like a family of elegance rather than Lisp being its most elegant member. For example, a symbol has all of a function cell, a value cell (give and take lexical binding semantics), a property list (which is global and O(n) in access), a print name. How do you lexically scope function cell features? In Guile, for comparison, a symbol has a print name. Period. Bindings are either lexical or established in module variables. There is no difference between value/function cell, so you can just call whatever you want without using FUNCALL. I still don't really know what Lisp's LAMBDA special form is supposed to return. You can store the result in a variable, so it seems to be data, but you can also call it without using FUNCALL, so it seems to have a function cell. If you store it anywhere, you can no longer call it without FUNCALL. So it seems to have some duplicitous value of which it loses half whenever you do anything with it. So I don't buy that Lisp is elegance incarnated. There is some beauty running in its family but I don't really think any member got all of it. -- David Kastrup