Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

But afaik TCO is only a requirement for Scheme implementations, not for e.g. Common Lisp (i.e. you don't need to implement TCO to satisfy the Common Lisp standard). I don't see how the lack of TCO prevents it from being a valid Lisp dialect.


Do you need to implement the common lisp standard to be "a lisp"? What is a lisp?


Exactly my point. I was just using CL as example because I think it would be hard to argue that it is not a Lisp yet the standard doesn't guarantee TCO.

> What is a lisp?

It's a very good question. I think PG sums it up quite nicely in "Revenge of the Nerds" [1]. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not quite sure there's any point in classifying something as a Lisp or not...

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: