From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!npeer.kpnqwest.net!nreader1.kpnqwest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Representing code as XML: the Flare Programming Language References: Mail-Copies-To: never From: Erik Naggum Message-ID: <3206985430398054@naggum.net> Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 56 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 21:17:13 GMT X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@Norway.EU.net X-Trace: nreader1.kpnqwest.net 997996633 193.71.66.49 (Thu, 16 Aug 2001 23:17:13 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 23:17:13 MET DST Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:14476 * shepherdofchaos@cs.com (Levi Conley) > Getting to the point of this post, in my web wanderings I also came > across a proposal for a new language project (open source) that seemed > to be quite promising. I'm just wondering if anyone with a lot more > language experience than myself has evaluated this language yet, and > has opinions, etc. Here is the link: > > http://flarelang.sourceforge.net/ > > The statement that most intrigued me went something like this: "XML is > to Flare what linked lists are to Lisp." I'm still not sure what all > that would imply, but it sure sounds interesting. What I really want > to know is if Flare, as initially proposed, seems to be capable of > making some AI task much easier than Lisp. There is a simple and elegant answer to this question: Just learn Common Lisp well first. New languages are exciting to people who know mostly new languages, so learn an old language before you learn new ones and get out of the maelstrom that will drown you in ever new languages that add nothing at all except some miniscule additional feature from another language that someone needed to make a whole new language to implement because he did not know (Common) Lisp to begin with. A "new" language that differs from the rest of the crop by one or a couple features is proof positive that both what it came from and what it has become are mutations about to die. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such "languages" that people have invented over the yeare, for all sorts of weird purposes where they just could not use whatever language they were already using, could not extend it, and could not fathom how to modify its tools without making a whole new language. They never stopped to think about how horribly wasteful this is, they just went on to create yet another language called Dodo, the Titanic, Edsel, Kyoto-agreement... John Foderaro has been credited with this profound statement about the nature of Lisp: Lisp is a programmable programming language. People who have not programmed in (Common) Lisp do not understand what this means because they are used to programming tools that build a Berlin wall between the language and the user. This, ironically, is a manifest feature of XML -- the language in which there are containers for data, but where the writing on the outside of the container is in a different language than the contents. This applies to attributes in elements, to the XML declarations, to the Schema thing, to the parent language SGML. All of these languages scream at the user: "The language you users should use is not good enough for us language developers!" Simply put, Lisp _is_ good enough for both language developer and user. If you really want to produce XML that can be used by this Flare thing, use (Common) Lisp instead of FlareSpeak to write it originally, once you learn (Common) Lisp. Then, if Flare is really worth looking into once it matures for a few years, you will have done both communities a favor. And if Flare fizzles, you will at least not have wasted your time. ///