>> You're saying, in effect, that a language with s-expression syntax needs the extra boost of being on a popular VM to make it.
Actually, my guess is that all future non-DSL languages are going to need to be built on a popular VM/framework in order to succeed, because of the advantages I listed in my earlier post. A DSL can get by without a popular platform because, by definition, it doesn't extend beyond its narrow scope and thus doesn't need access to a broad range of libraries. Also, DSLs don't tend to be performance sensitive and therefore don't need the compiler optimizations.
What I was really responding to was the fact that you are the co-author of Arc, and I was (wrongly) seeing your post in that context. My apologies for confusing the issue, although I do think that the point I'm driving at is an important one.
It seems to me you're saying it's the latter case: that new Lisps will get an advantage from being built on existing VMs that new "mainstream" languages don't need. Maybe. But in that case, let's follow the thread further: what is it about Lisp dialects that makes them need this extra crutch?
Not the semantics, surely. I'm sure if you gave ordinary schmoes a language that looked familiar, they wouldn't balk at it because it happened to have clean semantics. Is it merely the name "Lisp?" You could solve that problem by refusing to call it a Lisp. So all that's left is syntax. You're saying, in effect, that a language with s-expression syntax needs the extra boost of being on a popular VM to make it.
I don't know if that's true or not. It might be. But it is interesting to know that this is what the argument reduces to.