Is Lisp Still Unique? Or at Least Different? (2002)
I&#x27;m really curious about the benchmarks used for Java (and C++).  List processing being 20x slower than C++?  Array access being 7x slower than C++?<p>So yep.  A 16 year old benchmark when Java 1.4 was current (Java 5 was 2004 which brought with it a collections rework and a lot of improvements with not everything needing to be synchronized) based on a 20 year old update on something that was written in &#x27;91.<p>&gt; Built-in Support for Lists. Java has the Vector type, which allows for sequences of dynamically varying length<p>That&#x27;s ancient history.<p>&gt; Dynamic Typing. Java attaches run-time type information to instances of the class Object, but not to primitive data elements. However, Java requires a type declaration for every variable. This has some advantages for production code, but has disadvantages for rapid prototyping and evolution of programs. Java does not have a generic&#x2F;template system that would allow types life Vector&lt;String&gt;, and suffers greatly because of it. Python&#x27;s object model is the same as Lisp&#x27;s, but Python does not allow optional type declarations as Lisp does.<p>More ancient history.<p>The Java IDE being compared is BlueJ.<p>Some of those points were valid in &#x27;97.  Some were interesting in 2002.  But languages have changed and Java (1.4 -&gt; Java 8 and beyond), Python (2.1 -&gt; 3.7) and Perl (5.7 -&gt; 5.28.0) have all matured quite a bit since then.  And then there&#x27;s the ideas of functional programming that are seeping into other languages.<p>This article aged worse than the bumperstickers from &#x27;85 that&#x27;s also currently on the front page.