Re: something to chat about, lisp and Mathematica for list processing.

I thought everyone was bored this weekend...

What was so boring this weekend?
Forgive me but I can't find a specific boring
issue in this forum the current week.
Of course I speake on behalf of myself.
Which you don't do in your message.
So If you are bored, it's ok!
But do not make generalizations.
If you are not interested in one thread, simply
do not participate in.
Otherwise, make your own forum, where you could be
the moderator of it and "cut" what posts...make you bored!

With kind regards
Dimitris



/ Nasser Abbasi :
I thought everyone was bored this weekend, so I am strating a new
language-war topic :) (dont you love these topics?)

Lisp was one of the earliest programming languages I fell in love with, I
guess because I was fascinated with studying AI then (the language before it
was Fortran, and after lisp I fell in love with Pascal, then ...etc.)

But I have not used lisp for many many years now.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_programming_language it says : The
name Lisp derives from "List Processing".

And now I am using Mathematica more (for school work), and saw this in
Mathematica docs:

"Widely recognized as the world's most powerful list manipulation language,
Mathematica ..."

Topic for discussion: From only the list processing/manipulation point of
view, and nothing else, what would you consider the advantages/disadvantages
of one over the other?

I am sure by now, any kind of list processing task that can be done by one
language, most likely can just as well be done in the other.

So the question is not really asking about syntax or how many extra key
strokes needed to do the same list 'manipulation', but more along the lines
if there exist something inheritably more advantages of one language over
the other *when it comes to list processing*. I think one can argue than too
many [[[[[ ]]]]]] are harder to read than ((((( )))))) and I would probably
agree, but I remember also when I programmed in lisp I had problems making
sure the closing )))) matched the starting (((((, any way...I am thinking
more along the lines of a language design issues related to list processing
which might make one more suited for list processing than another.

May be someone here has more insight into both and educate us.

Nasser

.

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