Partap Davis wrote: > Is there something so fundamental to the lisp language that the entire > environment needs to be distributed with a (possible very simple) > program?
Yes. The thing is, in Lisp, data is code is data. Your very simple program is fully allowed (encouraged, even) to take user input, or other data that isn't known at compile time, and treat it as code. So basically every program needs to be able to recompile new s-expressions on the fly. This is a Really Good Thing about Lisp, in terms of the power of the language. And in fact a lot of non-lispy language programming is trying to replicate this sort of thing, by making programs "data-driven". Lisp has sort of taken data-driven programming to the extreme, if that helps it make sense. - josh g. _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
