Subject: Re: On Lisp From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 22:01:24 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3208888882103256@naggum.net> * Mark Hulme-Jones > I suspect the kinds of libraries he misses are those for threading, > sockets, shared memory, regular expressions and maybe a GUI. Those are > the sorts of things that are 'standard' (In a fairly loose sense of the > word) in the Perl and Python worlds. The problem with this "analogy", if that is what it is, is that Perl and Python are single-implementation languages and you buy into whatever they give you, qua languages-and-implementation. This is no different from using a single Common Lisp environment. Can you use the regexp library from Perl in Python? Why do you want to use the regexp library from one Lisp in another? (I know the answer, but I would like you think about the reasons you think "it is the same language, damnit" is sufficient to gripe when you do not gripe about single-implementation languages.) > I've also heard it argued that in the so-called internet age, languages > now need to support network programming at the core level in order to > compete. In addition to sockets this would presumably mean built-in > support for the most popular internet protocols, ie. HTTP, as well as > providing datatypes for things like URIs. Whilst I'm not sure I agree > with this, you can be certain that in the eyes of many people, the lack > of a standard in this area might make CL look a little dated. Which other languages have a _standard_ specification for this? Why is Common Lisp held to a different standard (pardon the pun) than languages that have only a single implementation or who survive wih libraries that require significant system-dependent customization like that provided by autoconf? ///