A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Martin Rydstr|m Martin Rydstr|m]

aleax at mac.com (Alex Martelli) writes:
> Didn't want to trigger some flamewar;-), but, yes, if that was my only
> choice, I'd much rather use small, simple Scheme than huge, complicated,
> rich, powerful Common Lisp.  ((But in this case I'm biased by early
> experiences, since when I learned and used Lisp-ish languages there WAS
> no Common Lisp, while Scheme was already there, although not quite the
> same language level as today, I'm sure;-)).

If that was in the early to mid eighties, which I seem to recall you
mentioning, the Lisp dialects mostly in use were huger, more
complicated, richer and more powerful than Common Lisp in many, if not
most, respects, as far as I can tell.  Common Lisp is a (later)
augmented least common denominator of those Lisps. The really big
thing that's newer and greater in CL is CLOS and the condition system.

',mr

-- 
[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is
beautiful.  -- Neal Stephenson, _In the Beginning was the Command Line_