Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
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From: jeff@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: scsh in scm and Scheme gui's
Message-ID: <DKo6wD.Lox.0.macbeth@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <4bc614$itj@boogie.cs.utexas.edu> <87zqcm3pt0.fsf@organon.serpentine.com> <4bjskn$o6b@jive.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 18:48:13 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <4bjskn$o6b@jive.cs.utexas.edu> wilson@cs.utexas.edu (Paul Wilson) writes:

>>Quoth Olin, in the article to which Paul followed up:
>>
>>o> Contrary to the popular claim, people are *not* afraid of parens.
>>
>>Without wishing to make this sound like a flame, I find it somewhat
>>hard to believe that people are still willing to make such an
>>assertion in light of the treacle pace with which the Lisp industry
>>grows relative to the rest of the software industry.  Look at Franz;
>>they've shipped a good product for over a decade, and they're still a
>>tiny company.  Sure, AutoCAD is more of a success, but it's *one*
>>application.
>
>Agreed.  Look at Perl.  Look at TCL.  Look at Visual Basic.  These are
>the biggies, not AutoCAD.  While syntax isn't the only issue, it's
>not one that can be ignored. 

Gee, maybe Olin has, like, _evidence_.  Maybe he's not just making
it up.  (I know of some evidence from Multics Emacs, but that was a
long time ago.  But I know there can be evidence.)

Sure, it does seem that syntax would be a problem.  I can understand
why many people might not like "all those parens".

But the relative success of Perl, TCL, etc vs Allegro CL does _not_
_show_ syntax is a problem.  There are plenty of other differences
between Allegro CL and Perl, just for instance.  (I use Perl from
some things where I wouldn't use CL, BTW, and this has nothing to
do with syntax.  It has to do with the size of CL programs at
run-time and the lack of fast enough text-based file-processing.)

Note that I'm not saying Lisp syntax isn't a problem.  Maybe it is.
All I'm doing is objecting to an unjustified inference.  If anyone
has some better evidence that syntax is (or isn't) a barrier, let's
have it.

-- jd
