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Messages - arquebus

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#1
Whither newLISP? / Re: Why dynamic scope?
May 03, 2012, 02:10:55 PM
Lutz and Cormullian- Thank you for your responses. Although I was hoping for a quick 2 sentence explanation, the fact that the reason for using dynamic scope requires a deeper understanding of Lisp is of course a good thing. I have also discovered PicoLisp which is another light weight Lisp scripting language which is also dynamically scoped. Incidentally it was also designed by a german fellow. I also plan to learn emacs which means I will learn elisp, so I am now much more motivated to thoroughly understand elisp now that I have discovered that dynamic typing is used in NewLisp and PicoLisp.



I myself enjoy learning programming languages as a hobby so I have a general understanding of Lisp syntax as well as most other major functional languages. So hopefully I know enough to be able to understand the articles youve linked to.



I have applied to some universities and hopefully I will be accepted by one and start my CS degree this fall.

   thanks much
#2
Whither newLISP? / Why dynamic scope?
May 02, 2012, 08:42:57 PM
I cant believe no one has asked this yet, but why does NewLisp have dynamic scope? I dont see any benefit to dynamic scope as all it does is create danger for name clashes between functions although I did notice that their is lexical scope for namespaces and modules. Is the reason for avoiding lexical scope is that you want to avoid incuring an overhead on speed in NewLisp? Is there any practical reason for having dynamic scope over lexical scope other than speed and efficiency of the running code?
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