Except syntaxes die. Syntaxes tend to encode what is possible to describe in a particular language. Eventually people decide what a language expresses is not adequate, they write a new language w/ new syntax to describe a new thing. Lisp adopts the new thing with little in the way of syntactical change.
How do you account for that?
* Over 40 years of historical evidence suggests that most programmers do
not find the power of macros adequate compensation for a syntax they
find highly unpalatable. It takes a special kind of arrogance to dismiss
all of these people as blind.
No 40 years of historical evidence suggest that your syntax will die. C and C++ have survived because of their intimate nature w/ popular operating systems. Lisp has survived because it can evolve. How can you not chuckle that C and C++ are just now getting lambdas and closures?
How do you account for that?
No 40 years of historical evidence suggest that your syntax will die. C and C++ have survived because of their intimate nature w/ popular operating systems. Lisp has survived because it can evolve. How can you not chuckle that C and C++ are just now getting lambdas and closures?In anycase Alan Kay says it better than I, http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523.