Re: Lua is about to become history

[Norman Ramsey <nr@...>]

 > > Paul Graham made a remark to the effect that all languages attempt to turn
 > > themselves into LISP as they evolve.
 > 
 > I guess he really thinks so; but it is not true :)
 > 
 > "Original" Lisp had no lexical closures, no pattern matching, no
 > coroutines (or threads or continuations, for that matter), no API to
 > other languages, no exception handling, no module system, and I think it
 > did not require proper tail calls.  (What it had always excelled was in
 > "extensible semantis", aka macros.)

Hurrah!  I've never liked that bit of parochialism and am happy to see
it debunked.  (Though I do think parallel evolution of languages,
e.g., in acquiring lexical closures, is a fascinating phenomenon.)

Now, to get really off topic, what shall we do about 'every program
evolves until it is powerful enough to read mail'? :-)


Norman