[Seaside] Re: Lisp vs Smalltalk (was ... HTML Builder (on the squeak-dev list))

[Frank Sergeant]

Avi Bryant <avi@beta4.com> wrote:
> Not really, no.  The point of the exercise, for me, was to come up with as
> lightweight a syntax as possible for generating HTML - the rough
> equivalent of a with-html macro in Lisp (which usually looks something
> like
> (with-html
>   (:h1 'MyForm')
>   (:form :action 'foo'
>     (:input :type 'text')
>     (if (use-submit-button)
>        (:input :type 'submit)))))

Well, somewhat off-topic and for my relatively idle curiosity, I thought
I would ask about your use of Lisp versus Smalltalk.  From other posts,
I have gathered you were web programming in Lisp and then switched to
Squeak?  Why?  What are the tradeoffs as you see them?

I loved Lisp when I did a little of it in college (and I had worked
through The Little Lisper, etc. prior to that), although I have since
realized that I only knew a baby's introduction to Lisp.  I'm now
reading Graham's ANSI Common Lisp in my spare time.  There seems to be a
certain amount of the "care and feeding of the image" necessary in
Smalltalk that the use of Lisp might avoid, although I guess Smalltalk
could be used that way by starting from a standard base image and
reloading packages (Dolphin) or change sets.

Anyway, if not too off-topic for you, I would love to hear any thoughts
you have on the subject of Lisp.


-- Frank