Now, I've been posting away about the virtues of Lisp and Lisp like languages in an effort to educate folks about what Lisp can do. But I certainly don't think that there's no room for advancement. So it was a little disturbing to read this
Could he be right? Is old-style Common Lisp or Scheme actually the best that we can do?
in Greenspun's post. Not because Greenspun believes it, but because I think a lot of people in the Lisp community appear to believe it. It's not enough to say Python/Ruby/C#/Java 2003 = Lisp 1982
Many people have the same perceptions about Smalltalk - they read about it once a long time ago, maybe used it a bit, and have since decided that it's old and outmoded (never mind that Java and C# are pale imitations). I don't think the pothole we fell into in 1997 is as deep as the one Lisp is in, but we do need to get the word out further.