That's your community. Given how much you've been proselytizing, I assume you're involved with that project.
But Arc is not newLISP, and isn't trying to be. If you prefer to use newLISP, please do so -- and stop trying to get people to ignore Arc in favor of it.
And by the way, newLISP is by no means "mainstream".
I suppose part of my point is that anything new has a window of opportunity. Imagine the difference between a fire that burns hot but short and a fire that burns long and slow. Which would you prefer to keep you warm for a night?
To be successful, a programming language community must hit critical mass during its window of opportunity.
Arc has a new window of opportunity. Thanks to years of pg's community-building, it has momentum. I'm not sure that newLisp has that same chance.
Had arc been released in a form which appeared polished, its window would have been short. This way, Arc has a chance to build.
When Steve Yegge and Peter Norvig and others come along to take a look, Arc needs to be ready.
Well if ever a language burned long and slow newLISP is it. As such it has already achieved most of the goals set for Arc. It puts the fun back into programming.
Look, I understand you like newLISP a lot. I don't think that's a good reason for downplaying this project.
You have a language you like? Good, stick to it. You don't need to paint other peoples' bikeshed, do you?
I don't really know newLISP very much, but I know it uses hygienic macros and my brain is just not wired for them. So forgive me if I prefer Arc.
You seem to know about the "goals set for Arc". What they would be? To "put fun back into programming"? Every new language and its dog claims to do that, nowadays. I'm having a lot of fun using LISP already, thankyouverymuch. (I mean any LISP.)
And I'm interested in everything that has to do with LISP. If you want to bring in technical merits of newLISP or discuss technical points about Arc, you are welcome, I'm all ears. Otherwise, you are better off doing something different with your time than starting religious flame wars. Personally, I really have had enough of that.
You really think that Arc can't do better than newLISP? Good. There's nothing to talk about. Time will tell, and you'll even get to laugh as Arc implodes. You'll have lots of fun. Let us have ours. Thanks.
You're both wrong, there are plenty of people working on CL and Scheme, and to every experienced Lisper I've spoken to, newLISP is a gigantic disappointment.
Since we're now all throwing out unsubstantiated claims, I would like to add the following ad hominem attack: You're both ugly too.
I certainly am not arguing against new programming languages. Let a thousand flowers bloom! I'm just trying to see what this one offers that newLISP doesn't.
So what? NewLISP's contexts are certainly real enough if you have to have it. Frankly I don't find lexical scoping all that necessary as I keep my functions and parameter lists short and sweet and never have any particular problem debugging my programs. If I absolutely need a lexical closure on variables I just use a newLISP context.
