2011/2/3 "Jérôme M. Berger" <jeber...@free.fr>: > Then why has not Lisp won over all competition years ago? > > Jerome You mean why(not(has(won(lisp,all(competition)),years_ago))) ?
Jokes aside, I think people in language-debates often forget that high-level languages are really just layers of syntactical sugar over machine-code. ASM is syntactical sugar over machince-code, C is syntactical sugar over ASM, and D is mostly syntactic sugar over C. They are merely ways to streamline certain programming-models, into a language that encourages those idioms and constructs. Just about anything that can be written in D, can be written with equivalent semantics in C, but the D-version is likely to be faster to write, and faster to comprehend. The purpose of higher-level languages is to encourage "good" programming style and readability. Period. The syntax is crucial here, it determines which constructs will become readable, and which won't, which in turn determines the mind-set of the programmer. Which is why I consider syntactic sugar to be seriously under-appreciated and undervalued in many language decisions.