Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> The only standard language into which Elisp can evolve, AFAICT, is
> Common Lisp.  [ Now some readers get disappointed, while some others
> become excited.  ]

Yay, excited.

I think there's a somewhat greater cultural overlap between Emacs Lisp
and Common Lisp people ("get things done") than between Emacs Lisp
people and Scheme people ("interesting academically").

Anyway, I think the dangled sorta-promise that Emacs would eventually
shift to Guile might have stifled Emacs Lisp development.  Whenever
somebody has brought up the issue of evolving Emacs Lisp (to
multi-threadedness or whatever's fun), they're usually discouraged by
others piping in with "oh, Emacs is moving to Guile, anyway, so don't
bother".

Perhaps if we just say firmly "Emacs Lisp is Emacs Lisp, and should
evolve in a Common Lisp direction, but without the whole-sale porting to
a third-party system: Please start hacking now" we'd attract people
interested in doing low-level language stuff.

Doesn't that sound like a fun opportunity?

*crosses fingers*

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no