From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Real-life examples of lexical binding in Emacs Lisp Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 18:54:46 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <87zj4m57l5.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <7b497693-bd08-45c0-99f4-e70836437535@googlegroups.com> <87y4k6rr2i.fsf@debian.uxu> <4c247f74-529f-41e4-9712-221560ff7c6c@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1433004925 3360 80.91.229.3 (30 May 2015 16:55:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 16:55:25 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat May 30 18:55:19 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@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 1Yyk2Y-0001tM-FW for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 30 May 2015 18:55:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40010 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Yyk2X-00022f-JK for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 30 May 2015 12:55:17 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 53 Original-X-Trace: individual.net B7K8/YS4C/R8/ZnZ5ROIjg7rAxkI6i+9FoGICugTFyAELz9tIE Cancel-Lock: sha1:ZmIzNmViZTNiZTRhMjI4MThkMTIxY2NkMWFhZGQwMzVjNzEzNzhlNA== sha1:inntTIm4yt5XAEjqI9v8WK0/dsI= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:212406 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:104690 Archived-At: Rusi writes: > On Saturday, May 30, 2015 at 9:27:25 PM UTC+5:30, Emanuel Berg wrote: >> Contrary to this situation, Lisp is right in front of >> us. There is no modelling in the world that will >> enhance our understanding of Lisp more than we write, >> say, 50 lines of it every day. And, doing that, one >> might actually do something useful while at it! > > Some very eminent Lispers perceive Lisp rather differently: > > | Lisp... McCarthy did as a theoretical exercise-- an effort to > define a more | convenient alternative to the Turing Machine. Lisp was > not really designed to | be a programming language > > From http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html You have to understand what Paul Graham is saying. But historically, John McCarthy definitely was designing a programming language, not just a theorical exercise. One perhaps may be mislead by the way "scientific" "papers" are written, including mere AI Memos. But that's just the "academic" style. John McCarthy definitely was designing a programming language, and this can be shown by the complains he had and requirements he made of the languages he had to use before he invented LISP, ie. Fortran and Algol. He wanted a ternary IF from Fortran (which was rejected at the time), he wanted a COND form from Algol (which was also rejected). Seeing that he couldn't have his ideas integrated in the existing programming languages, he set to define his own. But indeed, John McCarthy expected to refine a M-expression syntax for his lisp programming language; the S-expression syntax was used only for data, but since he defined an eval function working on code represented as data, and since his student Bertrand Russel implemented this eval function and realized that nothing more was needed to evaluate code expressed as data S-expressions, lisp in its S-expression form took off and flew out of the hands of John McCarthy. So indeed, the lisp we have with S-expressions is not the lisp John McCarthy wanted to design, but it is still definitely a programming language that John McCarthy wanted to and did define, for perfectly practical purposes at the AILab. And if it were a theorical exercice, John McCarthy wouldn't have missed the problem of defining lambda without closures. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk