From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: f8899,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: 10dd18,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: f4fd2,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3c634d3864722c74 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8899,gid10dd18,gidf4fd2,gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!out01b.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in02.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in03.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!pc02.usenetserver.com!news.flashnewsgroups.com-b7.4zTQh5tI3A!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.haskell,comp.lang.python,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Choosing a new language References: <20071228162351.f29a3ce4.coolzone@it.dk> <477561af$0$36390$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> From: Stephen Leake Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:41:43 -0500 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/22.1 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:o5mtIr9FmZYtoxBKBkjc5fSrN7A= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: abuse@flashnewsgroups.com Organization: FlashNewsgroups.com X-Trace: e103d47764e33e05e48ed26409 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.haskell:1002 comp.lang.python:161090 comp.lang.lisp:76463 comp.lang.ada:19059 Date: 2007-12-29T08:41:43-05:00 List-Id: George Neuner writes: > On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:54:57 -0800, John Nagle > wrote: > >> Actually, the ability to "fix a running program" [in Lisp] isn't >>that useful in real life. It's more cool than useful. Editing a >>program from a break was more important back when computers were slower >>and just rerunning from the beginning was expensive. > > Speak for yourself. > > The ability to patch a running program is very useful for certain > types of embedded applications. Not every program having high > availability requirements can be restarted quickly, or can be > implemented reasonably using multiple servers or processes to allow > rolling restarts. And in applications like IDEs, dynamically loaded functions are very important. Improving Emacs is vastly easier because Emacs Lisp is interpreted. You can make a small change to a function and quickly determine its effect. That's one reason (among many others :) I have not switched to GPS (which is written in Ada). -- -- Stephe