Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mrottenkolber 4517 days ago
> This was once true, but CL's standards body last made a significant revision twenty years ago, and no longer exists.

It is STILL true that we have a great standard which only includes the "definitely right" things. And if you ask me, its just so good that we haven't needed a revision in 20 years.
2 comments
JeanPierre 4517 days ago 

    And if you ask me, its just so good that we haven't needed a revision in 20 years.
What about threading and/or concurrency? CLTL doesn't mention it, yet it is something which is now considered a requirement for real, general purpose programming languages.
link
mrottenkolber 4517 days ago
We do have BORDEAUX-THREADS (defacto standard for OSS implementations). The commercial vendors supply various high perfomace concurrency frameworks.
link
jjwiseman 4515 days ago
> its just so good that we haven't needed a revision in 20 years

This is part of why I no longer use Common Lisp (after using it professionally for about 10 years). There are clear bugs in the spec, but it will never change. If your language is not progressing, it is dead.

link
kennethtilton 4510 days ago
Nonsense. The standards process is a beast, so no one is going to kick it off for anything other than a good solid rethink. As others have noted, the language and spec are done, aka pretty much ideal. Go write some code, people.

ps. Love elsewhere a mention of "modern-style" language development. Sounds like "make it up as we go", what Lisp was doing in the sixties.

link
jjwiseman 4500 days ago
That's right: The spec will never be revised, not because it already defines the ideal programming language (is that really your argument?), but because the effort and expense is so great.
link
kennethtilton 4500 days ago
Maybe somewhere in between. The imperfections are so small that even a modest effort would never get undertaken. Something folks need to realize is that Lisp truly is a metalanguage: I think both Graham and Norvig knocked off quick and dirty OOP hacks when that (decent) fad came along. So it is hard to imagine what innovation might come along that would force us to get the Lisp hood up.
link