Sunday, February 09, 2003 | |
James Robertson asks, "Lisp gets a thought, why not Smalltalk?". Good question. I'm trying out Lisp because I had some exposure to it in a language survey course in college. And Lisp has direct applications in the travel industry, with ITA Software blowing away the existing vendors' fare search capabilities. But I think that it's hard to underestimate Paul Graham's role as evangelist. His various articles touting Lisp make a compelling case for using interactive environments and against the C/C++/Java/C# lineage, and his "Plan for Spam" shows Lisp neatly solving real problems. Smalltalk's strongest advocate (in my opinion) is Kent Beck, who's been more interested in processes; while his XP and Unit Testing work mentions Smalltalk, he hasn't made Smalltalk the cornerstone, concentrating on demonstrating applicability in any environment. 10:02:50 AM permalink
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