> So, yes, they all belong to the same proto-language family, but constantly referring to them as a unique family is doing a disservice to each of them.
This is like saying that referring to dialects of English as "dialects" is doing them a disservice. If you are studying them, it is, if you are learning English as a second language, it is not.
If you look close enough, the differences are huge (after all, that's why someone created a specific lisp dialect in first place), but from a distance, they are all still pretty similar.
And finally, I rarely witnessed any discussion about those differences among lisp programmers, they were merely referred to when discussion how to implement something: "X-style Y", where Y is some CS-concept and X is some lisp dialect tailored to Y - and implementing anything in your preferred dialect is usually "trivial", though not necessarily performing as well as the implementation in some dialect tailored to the task.
This is like saying that referring to dialects of English as "dialects" is doing them a disservice. If you are studying them, it is, if you are learning English as a second language, it is not.
If you look close enough, the differences are huge (after all, that's why someone created a specific lisp dialect in first place), but from a distance, they are all still pretty similar.
And finally, I rarely witnessed any discussion about those differences among lisp programmers, they were merely referred to when discussion how to implement something: "X-style Y", where Y is some CS-concept and X is some lisp dialect tailored to Y - and implementing anything in your preferred dialect is usually "trivial", though not necessarily performing as well as the implementation in some dialect tailored to the task.