what actually made their favourite guest language possible to exist.
maybe i'm arguing semantics, but i don't think it's fair to say that the JVM "made Clojure possible" -- that's like saying "C made Python possible because CPython is written in C".
iirc the JVM was chosen as a backend because that's what Clojure's creator had to work/interop with. and i think that's generally the case with "guest" languages -- there's an environment you want to write code for (JVM/ browser), but you don't want to use its "official" language (Java/JS), so you create a new language and adapt it to run there.
and sure, reusing the Java stdlib and other existing code can help bootstrap a language, no doubt about that, but it's a stretch to say it makes it "possible"
Clojure's success lies in being a Lisp that takes advantage of the JVM libraries and JVM monitoring tools, without them it would be just yet another Lisp clone like so many others since the early 60's.
i guess i was being a bit pedantic... as you say, if you look at Clojure's whole programming environment (tooling, stdlib) and not just the language itself, putting it like GP did makes sense.
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maybe i'm arguing semantics, but i don't think it's fair to say that the JVM "made Clojure possible" -- that's like saying "C made Python possible because CPython is written in C".
iirc the JVM was chosen as a backend because that's what Clojure's creator had to work/interop with. and i think that's generally the case with "guest" languages -- there's an environment you want to write code for (JVM/ browser), but you don't want to use its "official" language (Java/JS), so you create a new language and adapt it to run there.
and sure, reusing the Java stdlib and other existing code can help bootstrap a language, no doubt about that, but it's a stretch to say it makes it "possible"
Clojure's success lies in being a Lisp that takes advantage of the JVM libraries and JVM monitoring tools, without them it would be just yet another Lisp clone like so many others since the early 60's.
i guess i was being a bit pedantic... as you say, if you look at Clojure's whole programming environment (tooling, stdlib) and not just the language itself, putting it like GP did makes sense.