I've also seen and thought of that retort lots of times which is why I made sure to qualify my statements.
What you're saying is true, but there's not that much you can say about languages that ISN'T personal preference, in the end. What I'd really like to hear is from someone that's enjoyed lisps, AND other languages, and feels that another language would be the one on which to make this claim (the claim that a language was the "end-all-be-all" of programming languages).
You mentioned not building it yourself on top of lisp, but that wasn't my point. My point is that if I DID have to build it myself, I would choose lisp as the language to amend, not that it makes sense that everything is built on lisp. That's what makes me think of it as a possible end-all-be-all language for me, and what makes me think I could make that claim about it. I can't think another language that is as expressive, flexible, yet as simple as lisp.
My point was that, knowing and liking languages other than lisp, Lisp is the only language that I could consider making such a claim about. A haskeller COULD easily say they like an opinionated language, and that would totally be their choice, and they'd be right, for them. I simply offered my opinion why I could imagine myself making that claim.
What you're saying is true, but there's not that much you can say about languages that ISN'T personal preference, in the end.
I agree, which is why I said your original comment (that these guys need to prove their language is somehow better than Clojure, because Clojure is, in your opinion, the "best" language on the JVM) was a bit vacuous. ;)
Incidentally, I will say I'm enormously pleased that Clojure has seen some non-trivial success, and I'm happy you've found a language that you seem to enjoy so much. Lisps have a lot to offer the world, and it's nice to see a mainstream, Lisp-derived language running on a modern platform like the JVM!
I happen to feel the same way about projects like this one that are bringing ML-derived languages to the JVM (incidentally, I also happen to be an F# fan on the CLR for the same reason).
And the fact that you could happily use both for different parts of a problem domain in the same project makes me happier still!
What you're saying is true, but there's not that much you can say about languages that ISN'T personal preference, in the end. What I'd really like to hear is from someone that's enjoyed lisps, AND other languages, and feels that another language would be the one on which to make this claim (the claim that a language was the "end-all-be-all" of programming languages).
You mentioned not building it yourself on top of lisp, but that wasn't my point. My point is that if I DID have to build it myself, I would choose lisp as the language to amend, not that it makes sense that everything is built on lisp. That's what makes me think of it as a possible end-all-be-all language for me, and what makes me think I could make that claim about it. I can't think another language that is as expressive, flexible, yet as simple as lisp.
My point was that, knowing and liking languages other than lisp, Lisp is the only language that I could consider making such a claim about. A haskeller COULD easily say they like an opinionated language, and that would totally be their choice, and they'd be right, for them. I simply offered my opinion why I could imagine myself making that claim.