Talk:LISP

"OK, no problem: it is very inappropriate. The language is quite complex. It is a "functional" (meaning non-functional) programming language, for maximum inconvenience. Sure, you can iterate with recursion... and you can also do dentistry with a dremel tool or cut grass with a toenail clipper. The syntax itself utterly fails to take advantage of the human eye-brain system being a pattern-matching engine. While other languages make various bits of syntax immediately recognizable, LISP makes everything look the same. LISP leads to programs that crash at runtime with various type errors, rather than being stopped at compile time. Speaking of which, while LISP compilers do exist (expensive and proprietary as a rule), it is normal to use a slow-ass interpreter. The XO is already choking to death under a pile of Python code; we don't need to add to the suffering. The scoping rules are a perversion designed to kill the last feeble hope of getting decent performance or code maintainability. The laptop has limited space for interpreters and libraries. The LISP runtime stuff does not deserve a place in front of the many more useful languages like C, BASIC, FORTRAN, Ada, perl... and even COBOL. Supplying LISP to children is especially evil because it will turn most of them away from programming."

The current text of this article is either factually incorrect or highly opinionated in every point. I'd like to update this with real information on running lisp systems on an XO when I have had more time to make it work.

In the meantime, I suggest this page be cleansed.