Paul Rubin <http://[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> In fact, all previously correct programs continue to work as before, >> and in addition, some hitherto incorrect programs become correct. >> That's an increase in power: new programs are possible without losing >> the old ones. > > There's more to power than making more programs possible. We also > want to be able to distinguish correct programs from incorrect ones. > Lisp has the power to eliminate a large class of pointer-related > errors that are common in C programs, so Lisp is more powerful than C > in that regard. Increasing the number of programs one can write in > the unfounded hope that they might be correct is just one way to > increase power. You can sometimes do that by adding features to the > language. Increasing the number of programs you can write that are > demonstrably free of large classes of errors is another way to > increase power. You can sometimes do that by REMOVING features. > That's what the Lisp holdouts don't seem to understand. > >> Right. GC gets rid of /program errors/. Pure functional programming >> gets rid of /programs/. > > GC also gets rid of programs. There are programs you can write in C > but not in Lisp, like device drivers that poke specific machine > addresses. I'm sure this would be news to the people who wrote the operating system for the Lisp machine. What makes you think that a Lisp implementation couldn't provide this? -- There are three doors. Behind one is a tiger. Behind another: the Truth. The third is a closet... choose wisely. (remove-if (lambda (c) (find c ";:-")) "a;t:k-;[EMAIL PROTECTED];p:i-.:e-d:u;") -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
