Re:Hy: A dialect of Lisp that's embedded in Python
by mumblemumble on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @10:57AM
(#27050670)
This seems a bit like the story with Clojure vis-a-vis Java, to me. Yes, Clojure does a lot to clean up Java's verbosity, flaky implementation of generics, etc. But I don't think that's actually because Clojure is a Lisp; I think it's mostly because Clojure is a dynamic language. For example, Clojure largely resolves Java's generics situation by simply not needing them in the first place.
That worked for Java, where a lot of people are stuck on the JVM for legacy reasons, but yearning to at least be able to work in a more ergonomic language. Go lives in a different social environment, though. Nobody's stuck on Go because they've got 25 years' worth of massive legacy Go monoliths that they can't just chuck out the door. They're on Go because Go is what they want. And I'm pretty sure, given that they're invested in Go, that a dynamic language with a heavy focus on metaprogramming is approximately the opposite of what they want.
That worked for Java, where a lot of people are stuck on the JVM for legacy reasons, but yearning to at least be able to work in a more ergonomic language. Go lives in a different social environment, though. Nobody's stuck on Go because they've got 25 years' worth of massive legacy Go monoliths that they can't just chuck out the door. They're on Go because Go is what they want. And I'm pretty sure, given that they're invested in Go, that a dynamic language with a heavy focus on metaprogramming is approximately the opposite of what they want.