Ruby and Lisp, sitting in a tree…
(I just submitted this story to Slashdot, but I didn’t want to see this masterpiece get lost in the bowels of their submission queue, so I’m also posting it here. Update: it got accepted)
The developers of Rubinius, an experimental Ruby interpreter inspired by SmallTalk, have been discussing the possibility of adding a Lisp dialect to their VM. Pat Eyler collected some ideas and opinions from the people involved and it makes for some interesting reading.
For many, Ruby already is an acceptable Lisp, and the language itself started as a perlification of Lisp (even Matz says so) so it is perhaps fitting and might help explain why the whole idea feels right.
Now, if someone added support for VB and gave it the respect it deserves, the world would be a better place.
January 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Lisp is to Ruby what Java is to Perl.
January 14th, 2007 at 1:38 am
Only thing I’d like to see on ruby from lisp land would be support for special forms capable of modifying the AST at runtime.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:53 am
I wonder if Elizabeth would care to elaborate?
I was sort of under the impression that Lisp is to Ruby what Lisp is to Perl.