Howdy guys,
I just mentioned newlisp over at the arch linux
forums. One guy fails to see the point of newlisp
because you can already do "most of that stuff" with
lisp or scheme. I just don't know how to respond. I
mean, this comes up all the time, right? I'm tempted
to simply say that newlisp is not really trying to be
lisp or scheme, the three can coexist, and newlisp
stands up on its own merits.
In my experience, people's open-mindedness varies inversely with their readiness to argue with you. So I don't think it's worth trying to persuade people who aren't open to new things... The open-minded people will try new things for themselves if they're interested.
However I'm not a salesman - perhaps a salesman for newLISP would have to be more aggressive or persuasive than this!
Technical people are sometimes more impressed with actual code than with general comments and claims. On some mailing lists, I just contribute a newLISP solution: people can then say "wow that's neat" or "too many parentheses" and make their own mind up.
I agree with what cormullion has said here. I just wanted to add the response Melissa (my wife) gave after we read Tom's post: "newLISP is a scripting language. LISP and Scheme aren't."
m i c h a e l