Why Every Language Other Than LISP is Laughably Wrong
Geoff Schmidt, Matt DeBergalis
Wed Jan 7, Thu Jan 8, 08-10:00pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: 6.001 or other functional programming experience
Most languages are awkward subsets of Lisp; the headline features of today's "new" languages are often straightforward combinations of Lisp primitives. What makes Lisp powerful enough to efficiently implement programming idioms discovered decades after its creation?
We'll see how Lisp starts with a universal data language structurally similar to XML, picks a convention to describe computation, and then defines increasingly powerful constructs, from basic language features to user programs. We'll look at macros, the theory of code as data, and the Metaobject Protocol, Lisp's generalized object system. Along the way we'll mock mistakes made by designers of other languages.
Contrary to the title, we'll also discuss the shortcomings of Lisp.
Web: http://www.mit.edu/iap/lisp
Contact: Geoff Schmidt, w20-557, x3-7788, sipb-iap-lisp@mit.edu
Sponsor: Student Information Processing Board
Latest update: 31-Oct-2003
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