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Are macros still at the "top" of the features pyramid?

In http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html , PG argues that Lisp is more powerful than other languages because it has macros. However, in the 50 years since the invention/discovery of Lisp, is there now some language that has a new feature X that lisps don't have (and can't easily add)? Or are macros still the "pinnacle" of language features?




Lisp is more powerful than other languages because it has macros

It's a bit more complicated than that. The key idea is that programs are composed of lists. But that idea is tied to several others:

http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html


Fair enough, although I was asking a different question (not very clearly, I suppose). Is there a language X and a feature (or set of features) Y for which the following statement holds?

"Language X is more powerful than Lisp because it has feature(s) Y."


Have you ever use the combination of LISP + Perl? Okay, maybe not. The idea is to use Perl's ideology (aka copy everything) with LISP technology (macro, since perl does not provide that).

A has X? Well, implement that. It takes 2 days, but it will save you months later. B has Y? implement that. Now you have BOTH X and Y. A users will wish for Y, B users will wish for X. You? Both. Sorry, I meant "Lisper? Both".




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