[snicker7]

Julia is basically a trojan horse for Lisp. Syntactically, it looks kind-of like Matlab. But semantically it is very much in the Lisp family. Since 1959, Lisp remains the best idea in computer programming. And Julia is bringing it to the masses.

[pjmlp]

Yeah, although Java did it first.

"We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy Steele

I assume Guy Steele knows his stuff when talking about Lisp like languages.

[lispm]

Java mostly only got typical runtime ideas (managed memory, virtual machine, code loading, calling conventions, runtime safety) of the JVM from Lisp (often via Smalltalk, etc.), but not ideas like executable memory heaps, code as data, etc.

Higher language feature from Lisp (CLOS, macros, conditions, closures, interactive development, ...) were not brought to mainstream Java. Closures, some interactivity, ... eventually were added many years later.

From a Lisp user perspective Java was more than 'halfway' away, and probably still is.

[pjmlp]

Guy Steele did not say 100%, after all.

So we could argue bullet points about how someone highly relevant in Lisp and Scheme community was wrong on his assertion, if you like.

[lispm]

There are lots of highly relevant people in the Lisp and Scheme communities.

https://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/...

[pjmlp]

Sure there are, yet none of them were responsible for designing parts of Java architecture, and made the statement we are discussing about.

Had not been for Guy Steele's background, and the context of the talk where he made that statement, I would agree with you.

[lispm]

There were many (ex-)Lispers working on comparable languages: inkl. Java, C#, Dylan, ... The discussion took place on the Little-languages list, where also a bunch of people with actual Lisp experience and general language design&implemetation experience were participating. I'm pretty sure many of them had a good idea where Java was technically positioned in the language landscape between C, C++, Ada, ... ML, Scheme, Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, Self, Perl, TCL, ...

Also keep in mind that SUN at that time was aggressively marketing Java as THE new language for system and application development, especially for the enterprise (a main target market for SUN). Though the origins of Java was as a programming language for set-top boxes, when it was still called Oak.

The quote from Guy was kind of an excuse there, for the modest design goals: at least we (-> SUN) dragged C++ developers towards Lisp, even though Smalltalk, Lisp, etc. people themselves were not a target and were not that impressed. Things like Garbage Collection in a language designed to replace C++ in many scenarios was still revolutionary.