Whitespace as syntax (was Re: Python Rocks!)

[Paul Prescod]

This conversation strikes me as a little odd. The original poster
hypothesized that languages become popular due, basically, to luck. I
responded that no, languages are popular for reasons. Now if we presume
that people WANTED these languages to be popular and that they do not,
then my position has the logical corollary that someone (or some group
of people) are at fault for the fact that they never became popular.
This last little bit makes me a bad guy because it means I'm saying
someone screwed up. 

But what I'm not clear on is where exactly you and the other
participants start disagreeing with me. Is or isn't there a real reason
that Lisp is almost 50 years old, still widely praised by those "in the
know" and is still not popular yet?

---------------------------------------------

Neel Krishnaswami wrote:
> 
> ...

You are right that Lisp-ers (and Smalltalkers) have gone to great
lengths to promote their languages. My hypothesis is that they have not
gone to great lengths to *adapt* their languages for popularity. This
leaves the vast majority of programmers in C++ hell -- sometimes by
choice and sometimes through environment.

> 
> If this is "suppressing widespread knowledge of a programming
> language," I think Java is the only case of a language that wasn't
> suppressed. :)

Actually, Java has the same adaptability problem but Sun got around it
by tricking thousands of people into rebuilding everything in 100% Java.
I would never have guessed that that strategy would work but I guess if
you have enough money and press you can pull off almost anything.

> Nowadays when people are giving away 500 MHz P3's in cereal boxes,
> this may be hard to believe, but remember that until around 1992 or
> 93, personal computers simply weren't powerful enough to run a full
> Common Lisp or Smalltalk. 

#1. Who said anything about a "full" common lisp or a "full" smalltalk.
It goes back to adaptability.

#2. Lisp and smalltalk-like languages have been available on PCs for a
very long time. 

> People in the PC world were writing
> spreadsheets in assembly language, for heaven's sake!

Well I still wouldn't write a spreadsheet in any of these languages. The
more interesting question is about high level apps. Why Visual Basic and
DBase rather than Smalltalk and Lisp?

> Er, it's not obvious to me where 'programming language' ends and
> 'development environment' begins. A programming language is an
> interface between the programmer and the computer, and so is the
> IDE. The line between the two is necessarily somewhat artificial.

No, there is a very clear line. A language is a set (usually infinite)
of strings. A programming language is a mapping from each of the strings
to a program (let's say a Turing machine). 

I'm sure that if we took the Smalltalk 80 book we could find the line
pretty clearly. Unfortunately I don't have the book.

> If we haven't invented the one true language yet, why do you think
> that we have already found the one true way of interacting with
> languages? Experimentation is a good thing, IMO.

Fine. But do you agree that languages that are tightly bound to
environments (or syntaxes!) that are not independently popular tend to
fail. It actually does not help for there to be alternate versions that
have different syntaxes or that are more friendly to the outside world
because they remain on the fringes of development *within* the
community.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
"The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which it
gave rise made modern science possible, but it was the algorithm that
made possible the modern world." 
        - from "Advent of the Algorithm" David Berlinski
	http://www.opengroup.com/mabooks/015/0151003386.shtml