>> ... >> if C and C++ are so hot, how come they haven't always been? how did they >> become hot? how did they overcome the "how come most applications are all >> written in Fortran and Cobol" argument? how does Java face the same >> argument?
>Applications written many years ago were done in FORTRAN and COBOL. >Today, many large computer vendors and software companies don't >even sell COBOL because it's too small a market! They OEM COBOL >from some small compiler company. FORTRAN and COBOL are sold >mostly to maintain legacy software. For example, Microsoft >OEMs it's FORTRAN and COBOL.
>Virtually all new commercial applications are developed in C/C++. >If you worked in the "real-world" (companies that develop >commercial software) you know that. Look in the new paper for >programming jobs. Count the number of ads wanting C/C++ vs. >FORTRAN/COBOL.
But there was a time were proposals to do software in C were rejected because "everybody writes in Pascal / FORTRAN / COBOL", i.e. the same argument you are using now to establish the superiority of C (or do you have another explanation why you need FORTRAN and COBOL for the legacy software?).
>Many in-house applications are being developed in VisualBasic >or some 4GL/GUI tool like PowerBuilder, because it requires >less technical skill ($25/hr labor for VisualBASIC programmer >vs. $60/hr for C++ programmer) and development is quicker >using something like PowerBuilder. Lisp could never >cut it in that market either.
If the $60/hr person can do the job in a day where the $25/hr person need a week, who is cheaper?
Howard R. Stearns wrote: > I guess I'm confused. I was under the impression that the really hard > parts of three of products you mention ARE written in Lisp. (From > Autodesk, Oracle, Viewlogic). I would add Parametric Technologies and > Cognition. Can anyone who actually knows tell us? Anyway, check out > the customer pages of vendors such as Franz and Digitool.
Cadence have an embedded extension Lisp, HLDS are remarketing through Mentor and all their stuff is in Lisp, Viewlogic have a set of silicon compilers (SILCSYN) implemented in Lisp. Yes, and Parametric and Cognition are also using Lisp. Check it out at www.franz.com.
George Van Treeck wrote: > Virtually all new commercial applications are developed in C/C++. > If you worked in the "real-world" (companies that develop > commercial software) you know that. Look in the new paper for > programming jobs. Count the number of ads wanting C/C++ vs. > FORTRAN/COBOL.
> Many in-house applications are being developed in VisualBasic > or some 4GL/GUI tool like PowerBuilder, because it requires > less technical skill ($25/hr labor for VisualBASIC programmer > vs. $60/hr for C++ programmer) and development is quicker > using something like PowerBuilder. Lisp could never > cut it in that market either.
Geez, chill out guys! Saying that Lisp sucks because people can't build database apps quickly like they can with PowerBuilder is a bit like saying that a whale is a miserable excuse for an animal because it doesn't fly as well as a sea gull. (Yeah, OK, let's see how good the sea gull does below a 40 foot water depth.)
The point is that each of these languages has a value and purpose which is appropriate for completely different circumstances. Which language is best suited for building turnkey database apps quickly? PowerBuilder. Which language is best suited for modelling and simulating complex problem domains? Lisp.
I'm always amazed when people leap from isolated questions like those above to the grand pronouncement that "xxxx is better than yyyy in all cases that REALLY matter" with such religious fervor and righteousness.
Charles E. Matthews Software consulting in knowledge Synergistic Technologies based systems and object oriented chu...@infonet.isl.net analysis and design
> Graham also notes: GNU Emacs, Autocad, and Interleaf are all written > in Lisp.
This may be slightly misleading. I don't know about Autocad, but GNU Emacs and Interleaf are both written in C. But in both these cases, the C code also has an embedded Lisp (or Lisp-ish, in case of GNU Emacs) interpreter. Thus once the basic system is up, various extensions written in Lisp can be loaded and executed. It is doubtful that in these two cases, the basic system itself would have been usably fast if all of it was written in Lisp -- but it is certainly the case that the usage of Lisp as an extension language has proved to be a very powerful and flexible extension mechanism in both. It would have been much more cumbersome and error prone, to try to provide C or C++ as a user-level dynamic extension language to the base system (it is possible to do this, e.g. in "plug-in"s such as found in Netscape Navigator, but these interfaces are nowhere near as flexible, powerful and convenient as GNU Emacs and Interleaf user extensions.)
In article <joswig-ya023180001110961105530...@news.lavielle.com> jos...@lavielle.com (Rainer Joswig) writes:
>In article <325AF986.6...@sybase.com>, George Van Treeck ><tre...@sybase.com> wrote:
>> Symbols, linked lists, consing, etc. are a wasted effort by people >> who know little about neuropsych and figure they could use >> introspection to deduce and brain functions. All programs that >> use such methods have been complete failures at such simple things >> as recognizing a hand written characters, voice recognition, etc.
>"Simple things"?
>> I haven't seen any interesting software written in a symbol >> processing language in last 7 years.
A book published by Morgan Kaufmann, 1992. Paperbound, xxviii + 946 pages, ISBN 1-55860-191-0.
Over 8 million pages sold!
now this text contains nothing "new": but my goodness it does lots of "old" things so succinctly!!! e.g. bobrows ENTIRE phd thesis in less than 33 pages, with full soruce code source and comments
-- Dr. Tim Menzies rm EE339 | t...@cse.unsw.edu.au | And for the tourist who ,-_|\ www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~timm | really wants to get away / \ AI Dept, School of Computer | from it all- safaris in \_,-._* Science &Engineering, Uni NSW | Vietnam. v Sydney, Australia, 2052 | -- Newsweek, late 1960s +61-2-93854034(p)93855995(f) |
> George Van Treeck wrote: > If Lisp is such a hot language, how come most applications are all written in C and > C++?
COMMON LISP is big, slow, expensive, and somewhat esoteric. It is a great language to program in for many applications. However, the programming language is invisible to end-user. LISP gives the end-user nothing for the extra resources it requires.
Compiled LISP can approach other languages in speed. But, that imposes constraints that restrict most of the functions that makes LISP desirable in the first place.
LISP is still my favorite language by far. I programmed in LISP for several years. Mostly simulations but also a simple schematics editor.
wi...@one.net (Will) wrote: >In article <325C6020.4...@sybase.com>, George Van Treeck <tre...@sybase.com> wrote:
>>Name some commercial applications written in Common Lisp. A >>couple of expert system shells is about it.
>Abuse, which is a recently released video game is written in Lisp.
No it isn't. Abuse has a LISP embedded interpreter, and the various game objects are controlled via LISP scripts. This is less than 20% of the total source code of Abuse.
It seems to be a common mistake in this thread to say something which has an embedded interpreter for language 'x' is 'written in X.' LISP scripts may be essential to the operation of each program mentioned, but almost none I have seen mentioned are primarily written in LISP. I don't think this concept is too hard to grasp, but perhaps most do not have direct knowledge of the products they are mentioning.
Dozens of windows apps have embedded basic interpreters... doesn't mean they are written in basic, as I am sure everyone understands. On another note, I keep hearing about the Apple LISP compiler - are many mac applications written in LISP?
In article <3260dca7.5106933@news>, mgr...@iastate.edu (Matt Grice) wrote: > Dozens of windows apps have embedded basic interpreters... doesn't > mean they are written in basic, as I am sure everyone understands. On > another note, I keep hearing about the Apple LISP compiler - are many > mac applications written in LISP?
No, Apple has (again) done a bad job. Thank god, "Digitool" now ensures the ongoing development of Macintosh Common Lisp. Their new versions (PPC MCL 4.0 and MCL 3.1) are out maybe this months. The biggest and most important contribution from Digitool until now is the port of MCL to the PowerPC, so that Lisp developers on the Mac again have adequate speed on the newer machines.
Some commercial software (public and inhouse) has been written with MCL and a lot more have been developed or prototyped with the help of MCL. Just see the customer list of Digitool (http://www.digitool.com/) and you will read a lot of familiar names. If I remember correctly, Apple has done early work on what we see as "Apple Guide" (the online help system) in MCL. There are sure more examples. Even Microsoft (!!!) had an user interface mock-up of Microsoft Word written in MCL.
> >In article <325C6020.4...@sybase.com>, George Van Treeck <tre...@sybase.com> wrote:
> >>Name some commercial applications written in Common Lisp. A > >>couple of expert system shells is about it.
> >Abuse, which is a recently released video game is written in Lisp.
> No it isn't. Abuse has a LISP embedded interpreter, and the various > game objects are controlled via LISP scripts. This is less than 20% > of the total source code of Abuse.
> It seems to be a common mistake in this thread to say something which > has an embedded interpreter for language 'x' is 'written in X.'
Stop and think about what you just said.
Somebody who already had a competency in C went to the trouble of cross-linking a second language into the application because it brought something to the table not found in C. Doesn't that tell you something?
I'm a FORTRAN hack, myself. So you two guys can club each other into pink mush and I have nothing invested emotionally.
And I accept your point... that having a *percentage* of an application written in language X does not entitle someone to call it an "X application".
But from a view of formal logic, it seems that, in the process of making your point, you have conceeded something all of us already knew: "There is no one 'best' language. Each has it's strong and weak points. Where there is an excess of hardware resources, you can afford to be inefficient in some places and have the luxury of living in a one-language paradigm. Where hardware is dear (How muct does it cost to put a 20_cents_more_expensive CPU in 10 million Nintendo's?), sometimes you have to cherry-pick the best technology for each sub-task and glue them together."
Erik Naggum wrote: > my guess is that the intense hatred for AI in some quarters can > be attributed mostly to the desire to externalize the feeling of stupidity > in having believed the hype to begin with.
Who hates AI? Can you give some examples. This is not a bait. It is a serious question.
> Hear, Hear. You should have told this all the people > who wrote successful AI software in Lisp.
> Obviously you have no idea of AI and AI software development.
I have no intention to join a pissing contest.
Rather, I will gladly admit to my ignorance in AI matters: "successful AI software"? Does that mean there's a piece of software out there that survives the Turing test and everything else you can throw at it?
I don't care what language it's written in, but unless something drastic happend in the past six months, "successful AI software" is rather far-out a concept.
> Bottom line: The proof of which is better (C++ or Lisp) is to > look at the commercially successful applications. If Lisp is such > a hot language, how come most applications are all written in C and > C++?
I would even set aside the question of MOST successful applications and just ask someone to show me ONE successful Lisp application. By "show me" I mean something I can download and try. By successful I mean something I would use regularly. I have lots of programs written in C that meet those criteria but none in Lisp.
I think it is much easier to prototype in Lisp than in C. You don't have to worry about memory management, you can make incremental changes to a running program, and usually you get to use nice high-level interfaces onto the machine's resources. Also, your mistakes don't crash the machine.
But in my experience Lisp can be much slower than C. Especially for character processing. I once wrote a program to read some ascii and decode it into binary. C was much faster at that than Lisp. Of course, you can always write low level things like that in C and call them from your Lisp program.
Another big problem with Lisp is you can't make a small, stand-alone binary with it. The smallest application you can build is usually about a megabyte. Hard drives are so large now that this may finally not be such a problem anymore. (I'm referring now to my experience with Common Lisp. I'm sure Scheme systems can make smaller binaries.)
So can anyone point me to a useful application, written in Lisp, that I can download and try? I can show you plenty done in C.
| Rather, I will gladly admit to my ignorance in AI matters: "successful | AI software"? Does that mean there's a piece of software out there | that survives the Turing test and everything else you can throw at it?
no, that is not what it means.
| I don't care what language it's written in, but unless something drastic | happend in the past six months, "successful AI software" is rather | far-out a concept.
yes, your concept of AI is rather far-out. this cannot be attributed to Artificial Intelligence as an area of research, however.
it is true, on the other hand, that some of the ambitious speeches were overly optimistic and thus hurt the field over time, but they also produced strong interest and enthusiasm in their time. ironically, the research produced most of the fuel used to discredit it later, by discovering just how hard their problems were. previously, people didn't know, and would listen to their hype, which they did, in large numbers, even.
in moral terms: who is to blame for believing something that turns out to be false? my guess is that the intense hatred for AI in some quarters can be attributed mostly to the desire to externalize the feeling of stupidity in having believed the hype to begin with.
as a general comment: if we are to discredit all fields that have had any hype at some point in their life that turned out to be optimistic pep talks more than the conservative statements of truth that seems to be required of AI by AI-haters, nothing would be left. if we allow fields to use hype to generate interest (as is done for Java, C++, WWW), we must allow for it in the past, as well. anybody can have 20-20 hindsight.
#\Erik -- I could tell you, but then I would have to reboot you.
> > ... > >a day when they were the dominant languages, and C and Smalltalk (the > >original source of the OOP ideas in C++) were funny little obscure
> I always thaught C++'s OO concept was derived from Simula67
In his book, The Design and Evolution of C++, Bjarne mentions lots of influence from both these languages, but C++ seems to borrow more directly from Simula than Smalltalk.
For example, C++'s inheritence mechanism is more similar to Simula than Smalltalk.
In article <32613c48.29744...@babya.shd.de>, fel...@mailbag.shd.de (Felix
Kasza [MVP]) wrote: > Rainer,
> > Hear, Hear. You should have told this all the people > > who wrote successful AI software in Lisp.
> > Obviously you have no idea of AI and AI software development.
> I have no intention to join a pissing contest.
You already did.
> Rather, I will gladly admit to my ignorance in AI matters: "successful > AI software"? Does that mean there's a piece of software out there that > survives the Turing test and everything else you can throw at it?
Again, obviously you have no idea of AI and AI software development. Who cares about the "Turing test"? Very few people (maybe Mr. Loebner).
> I don't care what language it's written in, but unless something drastic > happend in the past six months, "successful AI software" is rather > far-out a concept.
Read literature about AI, get some idea what AI is about (I can give you a hint: it is a very diverse field with many different ideas), and then you will see how silly your questions are.
Tanks everybody for your help. I have collect your replies to this message and I post them by request.
Some of this replies have not been posted to newsgroups so I'll try to cite only the opinion, not the sender. To all those senders: I hope you never mind that I have cited your opinion.
I have only included replies to my message, you can follow the rest of the discussion on newsgroups.
At the end of this message you can find our final decission.
=========================================================================== == THIS IS THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE =========================================================================== ==
Hi everybody,
This is a request for your opinion about the subject theme.
I'm working on Machine Learning and I wish to know your opinion about what is the best language to implement ML. (in general AI.) software. The discussion is focused on software for researchers, not for comercial tools.
My workgroup is now discussing what is best, but we haven't take a decission yet. We are mainly interested in:
- Existing implemented ML. algorithms. - An easy maintenance (easy to understand and easy for group working). - Language standarization. - Multiplatform support. - Interface with graphic enviroments. - Software Engineering methodologies developed.
We think both of them have its advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps your experience could help us.
I know there are other good languages for AI. implementations, but we want to restrict the discussion to Lisp and C++. Of course, you are free to aswer this message to defend your favourite language. Any opinion is welcome.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Carlos Cid.
=========================================================================== == THOSE ARE YOUR REPLIES =========================================================================== ==
You should also consider using functional languages such as ML (not machine learning, but the ML language, like SML -standard ML- or Ocaml).
I know that you want to restrict to C++ or lisp, but let me introduce you another language that mixed the best of both in my opinion.
TCL/TK. This language is interpreted and work with the comcept of list like LISP. The TK is the visual interface. All that stuff TK and interpreter exist for unix, mac and windows with the same visual interface object, so the code is close to be fully portable. Moreover, you can call C++ lib in TCL/TK. So you can build C++ librairy that does the hard stuff and that you can compile on different platform in the rest of the interface can be in TCL/TK which will run on many platforms too.
This is my point of view i'am not considering myself an expert in none of those language. I hope the information can help you.
I went into AI wanting to do everything in LISP or Prolog as these are the AI languages, I thought.
Since then I have had my mind changed on this subject. Lisp and Prolog are high level languages. A high-level language means the compiler makes a lot of assumptions about what you are going to be doing, in order to make programming a lot easier. I have used a high-level language in a business environment, and I think it's a great idea.
HOWEVER. In AI research you will quickly find that your high level language has made the _wrong_ assumptions about what you are going to do. Lisp and Prolog were not designed with neural nets and genetic algorithms in mind, for example. What you want is a programming environment that lets you specify your own assumptions about your future programming needs, in order to facilitate future programming. But it should also allow you to _change_ those assumptions as necessary at a lower level.
Voila. C++. A fixed high level language is OK in a business environment, but at the cutting edge of technology you need C++. For "facilitating assumptions" read "class libraries".
Hello. A while back I worked in the Computer Science dept. at the University of Aberdeen. There, the feeling amongst the ML people was that lisp/prolog was good for prototyping code, but for anything using large datasets, C was the language choice. I suppose like all software engineering, once the technology stabilises, it will be ported from lisp/prolog to C (ie Progol, c4.5 etc etc).
There aren't any good answers, unfortunately. It depends on how good your researchers are, how high performance the implementation needs to be, how much money you want to spend, etc. C++ is a pain to develop in, difficult to learn, and difficult to port, but it is efficient and there is a lot of software for it. Lisp is a bit easier to learn and develop in, but whatever OS APIs it has are proprietary, it is tricky to get good performance out of it, and it is very expensive.
One language to consider is Objective-C, preferably using a garbage collector like Boehm's: it combines most of the advantages of C and Lisp, and it is cross-platform (the OpenStep libraries for Windows and UNIX). It is simple, efficient, powerful, and free.
"ILOG Talk" is a Lisp dedicated to the development in Lisp with C++ libraries (including your extensions). This certainly a way to get the best of both worlds.
cc> - Existing implemented ML. algorithms.
Dunno. If there are in C++, then you get them for free in ILOG Talk too.
cc> - An easy maintenance (easy to understand and easy for group cc> working).
There is some kind support for groupware modular development. So far a training session is the most appropriate approach to groupware in ILOG Talk.
cc> - Language standarization.
ILOG Talk is close to ISLISP (the ISO standard for LISP), with many extensions.
cc> - Multiplatform support.
Plenty Unixes, plus Windows NT and Windows 95.
cc> - Interface with graphic enviroments.
Any the C++ (and C) libraries you want! We recommend ILOG Views, which is a C++ graphic library widely ported, efficient, and powerful. Check http://www.ilog.fr/ for more about ILOG Views.
Object-oriented modeling is best addressed by ILOG Power Classes. Please ask i...@ilog.fr for more information about ILOG Power Classes.
cc> We think both of them have its advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps your cc> experience could help us.
Almost all our ILOG Talk customers are Lisp programmers now enjoying using C++ libraries. Most of them still write no C++ code, some now code in both languages.
ILOG Talk is not Common Lisp (smaller footprint, modular runtime, simpler, etc), but it is definitely in the same familly of Lisp dialects (an extension of the ISO standard). You can get it for free on Linux (1), or buy it for Unix and Windows (2).
I am responding to Carlos Cid's request. I am basing my opinions on my own experience in doing something much like what he wants to do.
Carlos Cid wrote:
> My workgroup is now discussing what is best, but we haven't take a decission > yet. We are mainly interested in:
> - Existing implemented ML. algorithms.
A lot is available for Lisp. See the CMU-AI archive.
> - An easy maintenance (easy to understand and easy for group working).
Programming language theory experts say that Lisp has the advantage over C++ here.
> - Language standarization.
Common Lisp is an ANSI standard and many implementations have attained or nearly attained that standard.
> - Multiplatform support. > - Interface with graphic enviroments.
The basic common lisp language is implemented on many platforms and common lisp code runs on all of them. If you want a fancy interface to run an any Unix or Linux machine, that is no problem. If you want a fancy interface to run on any Windows(TM) machine, that is no problem. If you want a single fancy interface to run on both Unix and Windows(TM) then you need to do a bit more work (look into CLIM or TCL/Tk, and see the Lisp FAQ) but it is possible.
I suppose this is true of C++ also.
If a text-based interface is good enough, then that is perfectly portable.
> - Software Engineering methodologies developed.
I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Lisp is a very old and mature language which is being used in industry all over the place. C++ is relatively young but it is widely used.
In article <01bbb94b$46a00ac0$ec953ccf@default>, "Dan Winkler"
<hey...@tiac.net> wrote: > I would even set aside the question of MOST successful applications and > just ask someone to show me ONE successful Lisp application. By "show > me" I mean something I can download and try. By successful I mean > something > I would use regularly. I have lots of programs written in C that meet > those > criteria but none in Lisp.
Well, I'm using XEmacs daily. It is my preferred editor on Unix (maybe there is a version for Windows). If you would have a Lisp machine you could download CL-HTTP from MIT AI Lab. Well, on a Lisp machine you don't need to download it, you can directly install from the FTP server. It is a web server written in Common Lisp - I use it daily. It is also available in source with ports for MCL, ACL and LispWorks. You may want to look at WebMaker from Harlequin. It translates FrameMaker docs into HTML. Well, it has been used by Apple to translate all their "Inside Macintosh" volumes. If you have a Mac you may look at "Interaction/IP" written by Terje Norderhaug (Te...@in-Progress.com):
I am proud to say that the application has developed quite a bit from its conception as one of the first threaded forums on the web back in 1994. Interaction is now a solid framework for advanced web services, with chat rooms and shopping as two manifestations. A high number of web sites use Interaction every day for purposes such as:
* Visitor Entertainment * On-line customer support * Open discussions * Virtual Cafe's * Socializing * Dating services * Distance meetings * Intranet Groupware * Dynamic websites
...
> But in my experience Lisp can be much slower than C. Especially for > character processing. I once wrote a program to read some ascii and > decode it into binary. C was much faster at that than Lisp.
Depends on how you write this stuff in Lisp. To see how to get a reasonable performance even with a object-oriented design you may want to look at the sources of CL-HTTP. This may give you an idea how real world Common Lisp code can look like.
> Of course, > you > can always write low level things like that in C and call them from your > Lisp > program.
If we can't do it in Lisp, then there should be something wrong. Complete OS were written in Lisp.
> Another big problem with Lisp is you can't make a small, stand-alone binary > with it. The smallest application you can build is usually about a > megabyte. > Hard drives are so large now that this may finally not be such a problem > anymore. (I'm referring now to my experience with Common Lisp. I'm sure > Scheme systems can make smaller binaries.)
True.
> So can anyone point me to a useful application, written in Lisp, that I can > download and try? I can show you plenty done in C.
If you happen to have a running Common Lisp or Scheme, there is plenty of Lisp software out there. See ftp.digitool.com for MCL specific stuff, or see the CMU AI repository, see the Scheme repository, ...
| Well, I'm using XEmacs daily. It is my preferred editor on Unix | (maybe there is a version for Windows).
FWIW, GNU Emacs runs on Windows 95 and NT, too.
| > Another big problem with Lisp is you can't make a small, stand-alone | > binary with it. The smallest application you can build is usually | > about a megabyte. Hard drives are so large now that this may finally | > not be such a problem anymore. (I'm referring now to my experience | > with Common Lisp. I'm sure Scheme systems can make smaller | > binaries.) | | True.
but... Wade L. Hennessey's WCL uses shared libraries to produce very small binaries (smaller than C++ with GCC). granted, the shared libraries are enormous, but enormous shared libraries don't stop people who use other enormous shared libraries from pointing to their small, not-so-stand-alone binaries and gloat. with WCL, Common Lisp programmers can do the same if they wish. WCL runs on SPARCs with SunOS and Solaris. it seems not to be maintained. <URL:ftp://cdr.stanford.edu/pub/wcl/>
#\Erik -- I could tell you, but then I would have to reboot you.
| Who hates AI? Can you give some examples. This is not a bait. | It is a serious question.
I don't want to broadcast a professor's name, but his reaction to anything that resembles AI has been so strongly negative that the whole department has not done any research into AI techniques at all for the past 15-20 years, despite research in areas where AI researchers have gained important progress, such as image processing. he's unfortunately not alone.
#\Erik -- I could tell you, but then I would have to reboot you.
> This may be slightly misleading. I don't know about Autocad, > but GNU Emacs and Interleaf are both written in C. But in > both these cases, the C code also has an embedded Lisp (or > Lisp-ish, in case of GNU Emacs) interpreter. Thus once the > basic system is up, various extensions written in Lisp > can be loaded and executed. It is doubtful that in these > two cases, the basic system itself would have been usably > fast if all of it was written in Lisp -- but it is certainly > the case that the usage of Lisp as an extension language > has proved to be a very powerful and flexible extension mechanism > in both.
This is itself misleading. I don't know about Interleaf, but GNU Emacs is written in Lisp. The distribution, for reasons of portability, includes C source for the Lisp interpreter. Unfortunately C compilers are a lot more common than Lisp compilers, making this mode of distribution a practical necessity. An Emacs editor written from scratch in Common Lisp would be faster, not slower-- take a look at Hemlock.
"Dan Winkler" <hey...@tiac.net> writes: > > Bottom line: The proof of which is better (C++ or Lisp) is to > > look at the commercially successful applications. If Lisp is such > > a hot language, how come most applications are all written in C and > > C++?
> I would even set aside the question of MOST successful applications > and just ask someone to show me ONE successful Lisp application. By > "show me" I mean something I can download and try. By successful I > mean something I would use regularly. I have lots of programs > written in C that meet those criteria but none in Lisp.
How do you feel about Java?
-- Harley Davis
------------------------------------------------------------------- Harley Davis net: da...@ilog.com Ilog, Inc. tel: (415) 944-7130 1901 Landings Dr. fax: (415) 390-0946 Mountain View, CA, 94043 url: http://www.ilog.com/
>> Graham also notes: GNU Emacs, Autocad, and Interleaf are all written >> in Lisp.
>This may be slightly misleading. I don't know about Autocad, >but GNU Emacs and Interleaf are both written in C. But in >both these cases, the C code also has an embedded Lisp (or >Lisp-ish, in case of GNU Emacs) interpreter. Thus once the >basic system is up, various extensions written in Lisp >can be loaded and executed. It is doubtful that in these >two cases, the basic system itself would have been usably >fast if all of it was written in Lisp -- but it is certainly >the case that the usage of Lisp as an extension language >has proved to be a very powerful and flexible extension mechanism >in both. It would have been much more cumbersome and >error prone, to try to provide C or C++ as a user-level >dynamic extension language to the base system (it is >possible to do this, e.g. in "plug-in"s such as found in >Netscape Navigator, but these interfaces are nowhere near as >flexible, powerful and convenient as GNU Emacs and Interleaf user >extensions.)
It seems to me that the C code is solely to provide the elisp and bytecode interpreter. Granted, Elisp has lots of datatypes and fubctions designed to make editing tasks written in Elisp easier, but the editor itself seems to be written in Elisp.
In article <32618AFA.436C9...@clarkcom.com> g...@clarkcom.com "Glen Clark" writes:
> Erik Naggum wrote:
> > my guess is that the intense hatred for AI in some quarters can > > be attributed mostly to the desire to externalize the feeling of stupidity > > in having believed the hype to begin with.
> Who hates AI? Can you give some examples. This is not a bait. > It is a serious question.
Mrs Thatcher, ex Prime Minister of Great Britain (an ironic name for an island - er, set of islands - if ever there was one). It was allegedly a comment by Marvin Minsky about "AI"s someday wanting to keep us as pets that prompted Mrs Thatcher to kill the Alvy (? I'm not sure of the name...) project. For those who don't know, that was a big AI project in this country.
I hope this is a serious answer, even if I can't provide many details. All I know about it comes from watching TV, so don't be too suprised if some of them are wrong! On the other hand, I do remember the project being cancelled, whatever the reason may have actually been. -- <URL:http://www.enrapture.com/cybes/> You can never browse enough Future generations are relying on us It's a world we've made - Incubus We're living on a knife edge, looking for the ground -- Hawkwind
In article <3054283147110...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.no> wrote: > but... Wade L. Hennessey's WCL uses shared libraries to produce very small > binaries (smaller than C++ with GCC). granted, the shared libraries are > enormous, but enormous shared libraries don't stop people who use other > enormous shared libraries from pointing to their small, not-so-stand-alone > binaries and gloat. with WCL, Common Lisp programmers can do the same if > they wish. WCL runs on SPARCs with SunOS and Solaris. it seems not to be > maintained. <URL:ftp://cdr.stanford.edu/pub/wcl/>
Right, there is also CLICC, a Common Lisp to C Compiler. You can compile a subset (the dynamism removed) of Common Lisp directly to C. I never have used it, but it should generate small binaries, too.
Then there was the expensive Lisp-to-C compiler from Chestnut, I wonder how big the generated applications were (minimum that is).
