: In article <sjpw4hbzvo....@alfresco.usask.ca>, : P. Srinivas <sr...@alfresco.usask.ca> wrote: : >Why are they so many splinter groups in LISP community? The strength : >of LISP as an experimental vehicle contributed to its own misery. So : >many dialects so few users!!
: There are a zillion dialects of BASIC, and people still use it. There : was a True BASIC dialect which was multi-platform, but it died a : death.
I'm not dead yet!
But seriously, TrueBASIC, while nice, is obscure and overshadowed by Visual Basic.
bruce
-- on...@arupa.gsfc.nasa.gov -- Bruce O'Neel HSTX (301) 286-1511 -- Graphical icons were intended to make software friendly, and easy to use. Now Microsoft applications have Tool Tips - Text labels that appear when you move the mouse pointer over icons. We used to call these "menus." -- D Kalman DBMS 9/94
In article <50l27g$...@snotra.harlequin.co.uk> m...@pobox.com "mathew" writes: > That must be why Java's doing so badly then...
Software for the Web seems to be one of those special cases. ;-) Yes, I've noticed how popular Netscape is with the same people who might refuse to use another other beta. Ho hum.
The interesting question that springs to mind is: who is buying this (Java) software? Perhaps some of it is being written simply because it can be done. This has always seemed like a good enough reason to me, having observed the number of times that people do bizzare (and simetimes plain _dumb_) things with computers.
It's obviously a subjective thing. No single solution makes sense to everybody. -- <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
>> So guys, Common Lisp is wonderful language. Scheme is wondeful language. Dylan >> is wonderful language. Haskell is even more wondeful. I can't wait for >the time >> when I can write the kind of applications I write for living in one of these >> wonderful languages. But right now I just can't. And nobody can do it >right now.
>I could. I sure know companies who do. Just ask Altavista or >Dejanews for recent postings about Lisp related job offers. >You might also want to look at the Lisp FAQ. There >is an entry for a mailing list for Lisp related jobs.
>You may want to look at the customer list of Digitool (http://www.digitool.com). >Looks not that bad to me (companies like AT&T, Motorola, Adobe, ...). >Ask Harlequin and Franz for references.
Well, I'm really happy with my current job. I'm mostly happy with the tools I use right now, but I feel that using such languages as Lisp, Dylan, SML and Haskell could make my work _much_ more productive given the right implementation/development environment. I don't want to look for another employment opportunity just for the target OS or language change - I just play with all these wonderful things at home and the fact that I cannot use it at work just increases my frustration.
>> Another point here - have you seen the work done at Microsoft research labs on >> Intentional Programming ? That thing is supposed to end language wars once and >> for all - and it's real I'd say... And I'm sure it will integrate with Windows >> as seamlessly as possible - it's Microsoft after all. Too bad they say >it'll be >> in "product" state in 2000 :-(
>Interestingly enough they have been using some Lisp.
>BOB for example was written in Lisp.
Bob ? In Lisp ? What kind of Lisp ? From the brief look at the Bob binaries on the CD I'd swear it was written in "Modular" Visual Basic (the unreleased kind of VB targeted for hand-help computers) plus some multimedia extensions in DLLs. If it's really written in Lisp then I understand why it runs so slow :-)
* Oleg Moroz wrote: > On 02 Sep 1996 11:47:32 +0100, Tim Bradshaw <t...@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote: > First, if you want to distribute your software "en masse", the > executable size matters. Even the companies targetting CD > distribution tend to decrease the executable size, because they > usually give the user an option to install executables on the hard > disk thus decreasing startup time. And when you use two or three > CD-based packages simultaneously, you are forced to install some of > them on your HD (I usually use Visual C++ plus MSDN -- VC is fully > installed on my hard drive, taking about 150MB).
But but. How big is Netscape this week? How big is Word? These systems are just *vast*, but very popular. Small is good of course, but fast and useful is clearly better. And solutions which let you share the large image reduce the overhead a long way. I'm happy to concede that Lisp systems often don't let you do this right now but (see my other post) I question that going for a compiler that makes small standalone executables is the only solution.
(And I don't want to get into `mine is smaller than yours' arguments, but VC++ appears to be about 3 times as big as the Franz Allegro development environment on my Sun (:-))
> Second, AFAIK most OS's that use paging map all of the executable to > memory when making the system call analogous to 'exec' (probably > creating separate maps for code, data, resources etc). Thus, even if > you don't touch significant parts of the image, the system will > waste some amount of memory for maintaining page tables > (proportional to the executable size).
yes but this is really a small overhead -- 1% of executable size or something, which means it's typically only a really rather small number of pages.
In article <joswig-0209962341370...@news.lavielle.com> jos...@lavielle.com "Rainer Joswig" writes:
> Ever heard of AutoCad? Reduce? MuMath? Never heard of Macsyma?
From what I've read about AutoCad, it seems that it isn't actually written in Lisp, but uses AutoLisp to extend it.
> HotMeTaL? Interleaf? Abuse? A lot of CAD systems are using Lisp.
I recently checked the manual for the Windows version of HotMetal, and there was no mention of Lisp at all. It appears to be a well kept secret.
There's a browser and web server written in ML (at CMU), but they only run on certain Unix machines. Meanwhile, MS are busy promoting ActiveX, ISAPI, etc. No wonder so many people think that you need C++ to write Internet software.
Lisp needs some much better PR, like a few killer apps written in Lisp, and a lot of noise making sure that everybody knows it. I do mean _a lot_, esp if you want to drown out the message that "C++ is best", which is currently dominant. Believe it or not, but there are actually a few people who don't even know Lisp _exists_.
On the other hand, perhaps Lisp is just for the elitists. Fair enough, but that might explain why so few of us can use it. Please note the "can". In theory, I can use Lisp, and I do use it. However, nobody will know that I use it unless I tell them, and even then they're unlikely to ever see the software I write in Lisp, as I can't give them stand-alone binary. -- <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 <joswig-0409960801470...@news.lavielle.com> jos...@lavielle.com "Rainer Joswig" writes:
> Interestingly Reduce has been ported to a *lot* of platforms. > For Macsyma ask http://www.macsyma.com/. At one time they > got a good review in Byte magazine.
When did Byte last review a Lisp? It used to be once every two years, but the audience of the mag shifted away from developers, and the Lisp reviews appeared to stop.
> The question up came whether there is any Lisp-based software being > used at all. So I mentioned couple of programs that are > marketed by companies and are successful in the commercial > market. Whether they have a great market share is not that > much interesting. The Interleaf publishing system may have > a very small market share, still in some segments it may own > the *whole* market.
A much more interesting question is "who knows that these products exist, and that they were developed using Lisp?" Most people think that Lisp is a joke. We may know different, but we're unusual, coz we actually _use_ Lisp.
> Listen, my point is not that Lisp is the most widely used programming > language. It is not even the best for a wide range of tasks.
> My point is, you can develop interesting software with Lisp, people > have done it and still are doing it. There is no reason why this > should change, other than because of some people ignoring it.
You sound like somebody lucky enough to use Lisp. Most of us aren't that lucky, as the Lisps available to use either can't support the features we need, or the people we work for don't recognise the value of Lisp.
Yes, you _can_ develop interesting software with Lisp, if you use the right platform, if your employer feels positive enough about Lisp, and if the Lisps available to you support the features needed for the software you're developing. Some_ people will be fortunate enough to do this, because the above conditions will be satisfied.
However, most developers are forced to use other languages, like C++, because that's what they're paid to do, and they're paid to use C++ because that's what we're told by MS is needed in order to write apps for Windows. It's very hard to argue with MS. You can try it if you like, but you'd need a _massive_ PR machine.
> Often the problem for companies is to find Lisp developers at all.
I'm still trying to get the practical experience needed to call myself a professional Lisp programmer. I don't think that just messing about in my own time will be worth much, but I'd be happy if somebody out there would be willing to employ me as a Lisp programmer, working from home (in London, UK). It's hard enough doing this as a C++ programmer, never mind as a Lisp programmer.
This could be another reason why there are so many C++ programmers. Look at it this way. Pascal doesn't have much of a chance against C++, so why expect Lisp to do any better? Lisp is a lot more esoteric than Pascal! -- <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 <322f1671.44808029@news>, mgr...@iastate.edu (Matt Grice) wrote: > shell out several K$ for a Lisp package and get something with the > incredibly amateurish user interfaces that I see.
Your examples?
Do you think Apple Dylan has an "incredibly amateurish user interface"? This stuff has been created with MCL. In my view it is something more developers really would like to have. Harlequin LispWorks? "An incredibly amateurish user interface"? Xerox's Lisp stuff? MCL? Symbolics' Dynamic Windows? In fact people have built some very nice user interface stuff in Lisp (well, sadly the opposite is also true).
> this is the case. No matter how technically good a package may be, > it's hard to take seriously products whose interface is not only ugly, > but also not even in conformance with the platform they are delivered > on.
In fact this is a problem. On the other hand there are some packages which have enabled quite different user interfaces (-> CLIM) which are cross platform. This may be desirable for some software.
> On another note, it doesnt seem to me that Lisp (or similar language) > executable size should be too much of a problem any longer if managed > correctly. A VB or MFC app may look small, but is using a runtime DLL > which is quite large. This is not a new concept, but perhaps one that > vendors have failed to capitalize on. You sneak that library in and > from then on everybody thinks your programs are small. :)
Well, I would like to see Dylan and MCL shared libraries as part of the MacOS. I think Lisp systems have to implement services that really belong to the operating system (like some sort of memory management using GC). Both systems actually are using shared libraries. If you ask Digitool for it, you may even be able to compile your Lisp stuff to a shared library. So this has already been done. There is also a standalone app creator (for MCL 3.0), that doesn't include the development environment into your application. So this has been done. Other Lisp systems have delivery tools, too. There is a price to pay for having a sophisticated *integrated* development environment and wishing to deliver small executables. But who says that you can't import a Lisp to C compiler into your development environment (like CLICC) and create small Lisp applications. But they would lack all features that makes Common Lisp "dynamic".
Apple Dylan takes a different approach than most Lisp-like development environments. There is an integrated development environment and there are applications built with the IDE. They talk via interprocess communication - you even can have IDE and application running on different machines. Crashing the machine where the application in development is running won't crash your IDE. You even can connect with your IDE to a delivered application, inspect it, download code, execute code, debug it, whatever you like (yes, you can disable that). A local database stores the source records and can be queried in a wide variety of ways.
There is really no reason for Lisp users and implementors to be depressed and to be overly defensive. A more aggressive way of promoting this stuff is necessary. Without the current confusion that is part of the Lisp landscape. Period.
> just browsing around in the Web, I found a quite interesting pointer to > a forthcoming publication on Dylan.
I picked up a copy of Dylan Programming (ISBN: 0-201-47976-1) at Object World West. It's a nice companion to the TR documentation. It's more of a tutorial, and it compares various language features with C++, Java, and SmallTalk, which I found very informative.
It also provides rationales for some language features, and discusses some "programming style" issues, such as how to structure modules within a library.
I highly recommend it.
........................................................................... Chris Page Software Wrangler This message was created using Cyberdog Claris Corporation - a product of Apple Computer, Inc. mailto:p...@best.com http://www.best.com/~page/ ...........................................................................
... I think of Java in many ways, but mainly as a step toward ending the love affair that so many programmers have with C/C++. It'll introduce them to some "new" ideas, even if Lisp programmers have known and used them for years. Many Smalltalk programmers may also be laughing, and I won't blame them. ...
i do not know what you are trying to say here. whatever lisp programmers have "known and used" is on the fingertips of every sixteen year old who can hold a keyboard these days. [in the case of lincoln-sudbury highschool this was probably true more than a decade ago :)] java has nothing to do with it, except packaging. new generation of programmers appear to know the tricks of the trade, if not the history.
>> Ever heard of AutoCad? Reduce? MuMath? Never heard of Macsyma?
>From what I've read about AutoCad, it seems that it isn't actually >written in Lisp, but uses AutoLisp to extend it.
>> HotMeTaL? Interleaf? Abuse? A lot of CAD systems are using Lisp.
GNU EMACS, AutoCAD, and Abuse all fall into the category of software with a high-performance core in C/C++ and an interpreter for some dialect of Lisp, principally so that they can be extended by use of a highly-expressive language. It's interesting that Abuse, a side-scrolling arcade-style action game, is extended via a Lisp interpreter. Guess performance was acceptable after all.
>I recently checked the manual for the Windows version of HotMetal, >and there was no mention of Lisp at all. It appears to be a well >kept secret.
SoftQuad, the creators of HoTMetaL Pro and HoTMetaL Free, are a well-known entity in a little-known market, namely the SGML market, where Scheme is becoming an increasingly-accepted vehicle for implementing the complexities of conformant SGML support. If you look around the various HoTMetaL directories after installing, you will indeed find one (HoTMetaL Free) or more (HoTMetaL Pro) .scm files.
>There's a browser and web server written in ML (at CMU), but they >only run on certain Unix machines. Meanwhile, MS are busy promoting >ActiveX, ISAPI, etc. No wonder so many people think that you need >C++ to write Internet software.
The reason that so many people think that you need C++ to write Internet software is that the Internet was built around UNIX, hence C, and C++ is hair [sic] apparent to C.
>Lisp needs some much better PR, like a few killer apps written in >Lisp, and a lot of noise making sure that everybody knows it.
I wonder why the above-mentioned "hybrid software" isn't compelling? Perhaps because not everyone needs or wants it. It has occurred to me more than once that in all of the instances in which I haven't cared about some of Common Lisp's shortcomings, such as a huge price of admission in terms of memory consumption, it's been for the obvious reason that Common Lisp's baggage has been dwarved by the application-specific code that I've brought to the party. In other words, I tend to use Common Lisp for large projects--much, much larger than I'd be willing to contemplate writing, let alone debugging, in C++. Which leads me to a follow-up thought: is it perhaps possible that C/C++ are the McDonald's of software development--billions served, utterly pervasive, highly consistent results--while the Lisp family of languages is the Antoine's or the Ma Maison--high price of admission, extremely high quality, and really only applicable to special occassions, but on those special occassions you're not going to go to McDonald's, right?
>I do mean _a lot_, esp if you want to drown out the message that >"C++ is best", which is currently dominant. Believe it or not, but >there are actually a few people who don't even know Lisp _exists_.
As there are people scratching their heads and asking "What's Antoine's?" or "What's Ma Maison?" (Answer: Antoine's is perhaps the most famous restaurant in New Orleans; Ma Maison is a restaurant of similar repute in Los Angeles.)
>On the other hand, perhaps Lisp is just for the elitists.
Ha! I hadn't even read this far when I started to reply! How funny.
>Fair enough, >but that might explain why so few of us can use it. Please note the >"can". In theory, I can use Lisp, and I do use it. However, nobody >will know that I use it unless I tell them
How will anyone _know_ that you use C++, either, unless you tell them? They might _assume_ so. I've surprised people before by handing them a piece of software that they "knew" was in C++, until I explained to them that Oberon is a pretty cool language.
>and even then they're >unlikely to ever see the software I write in Lisp, as I can't give >them stand-alone binary.
Funny; I've got standalone binaries for the applications I build using Macintosh Common Lisp. Granted, they're a bit hefty to fit on floppies, but anything that takes >2 HD floppies will be cheaper to distribute on CD-ROM anyway.
><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
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cyber_sur...@wildcard.demon.co.uk wrote: > In other words, Emacs may be a fine editor, but some people will > still insist that you a commercial alternative.
A commercial alternative to GNU Emacs or XEmacs? Where? Until the advent of a commercial alternative (or the Java-based Emacs), I'll quite happily use a perfectly supported XEmacs.
> > With CL-HTTP you can build interfaces for web sites, so that > > they are maintainable by a nonprogrammer.
> Is this a standard feature of CL-HTTP, or would a programmer > be needed to build such an interface?
You need a programmer - well unless somebody would release source code for this purpose.
> Could the server the > maintained _without_ a CL programmer?
Not really. A future version maybe.
> CL-HTTP would make us more vulnerable than if we chose a > commercial web server (like the many web servers available > for NT).
My strategy would be to use CL-HTTP as a site management system for a conventional server.
> doubts, and I'm pro CL!
So you're are more like a "fan". You are "pro CL"? How many lines of CL do have actually written? Which commercial implementations are you using (LispWorks, ACL, XCL, LCL, MCL, SCL, ...)? Do you have any real experience with CL?
> HotMetal uses Lisp? Good grief. My colleagues use this app, > and yet remain ignorant of Lisp.
Well, there is a SCM folder inside a Lib folder. What could it be?
> Same with AutoCad. They've > no use for MuMath, so that'll not convince them. Same with > Reduce. You're using some pretty exotic examples, which is > what I expected.
Yep, AutoCAD the most popular CAD system. Sold hundreds of thousands copies. Very exotic. Scheme being base of the DSSSL expression language, is an IEEE standard, used in many universities and schools, used as extension language for a lot software - very exotic
What's exotic about Axiom? Maybe that its base is more advanced then Mathematica stuff. Macsyma is pretty exotic, too. Well, its just the grandfather of all Computer Algebra software.
RPL is the programming language for HP28 and HP48. Guess what RPL stands for. Reverse Polish Lisp?
Jesus, just that your Co-workers haven't heard of any Lisp-based application says just nothing. They probably haven't heard of Prolog, SmallTalk, whatever applications.
Ever heard of KEE, ART, G2, GBB, Metal?
Why did people port Lisp to Mainframes or SIMD machines? Just for fun?
Why is the CMU archive full of Lisp stuff?
If you look closely you will find them. Otherwise it would be unexplainable, why there are so many Lisp implementations. Or can you tell, why there are still Common Lisp vendors? How do they manage to pay their employees? Somebody buys this stuff.
Saying "I like CL" is kind of childish. I use CL, because I do have a need for an interactive development system. I can quite comfortably explore my ideas using CL. If you can't - well - be happy and use something else that is more suitable to your problem.
Rainer Joswig
Btw, we *really* need a web site that people see Lisp is still alive.
In article <joswig-0409960018520...@news.lavielle.com> jos...@lavielle.com "Rainer Joswig" writes:
> > > Yes I think so. There is a version that runs under ACL for windows > > > and that runs under NT.
> You may consider undertaking a coding project to help advance > CL-HTTP: http://wilson.ai.mit.edu/cl-http/projects.html . > Give the C weenies something to think about. There are > many interesting projects for students. There is a lot > to learn. And more to come. Better start now.
I assume that you're suggesting that I port CL-HTTP? I'm not a student, and I doubt that I'm qualified to port CL-HTTP. Also, I've no particular use for CL-HTTP, as I've explained. It might be an interesting exercise, but there are far better ways for me to use my time.
Like it or not, MS are full of C/C++ weenies, so I have to be one, too. :-( Take a look at the kind of stuff that MS are offering to C/C++ programmers, and see how much of it can be used in ACL.
Can I write CGI code in Lisp? Not yet. That's why I started writing a "toy" Lisp to C compiler.
> Just saw a television report from "CeBIT Home" (german computer fair > with some 200000 visitors in five days). The big topic was "multimedia" > and the web. Guess what they showed in this TV report? > Henry Lieberman's browsing assitent for Netscape. Agents as the > next thing beyond systems like Yahoo and AltaVista. > The software is, guess what, written in Macintosh Common Lisp. > And it was watching out for some pages about "programming > by example" and Lisp.
Excellent. Too bad so few people use Macs. Imagine that Apple runs into trouble. You can bet that some people will look for mistakes to blame Apple's failure on. Lisp sounds like it could be a perfect scapegoat. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
Meanwhile, most of the world uses Windows. Making a hit on _that_ platform would do far more for Lisp than on the Mac.
> Last week I bought a german newspaper. They had a story about > how computers changed our live. They had a **nice** picture. > On the left a Connection Machine and on the right a Symbolics > Lisp machine console. Gets me thinking, where are we ten years > later? (Btw., I contacted a friend at the newspaper. I > got a scan and will donate it later to the "Online Symbolics > Museum" at http://www.brightware.com/~rwk/symbolics/ .).
Excellent. I remember that Germany has also been a place for Atari ST users. The first native code Lisp compiler I used was on that machine. However, I don't use an ST anymore...
Is anyone still buying Connection Machines and Symbolics Lisp machines? I mean the hardware, not software only products, like Open Genera. What was the story, BTW?
> On CeBIT Home the japanese company Toshiba presented a tiny > computer (the size of a paperback): 640x480 16bit color TFT > screen, DX4 75 like processor, 8-20 MB RAM, 270 MB disk, > PCMCIA slot. This thing was really small - a sub sub notebook. > It runs Windows 95. You think CL is to large? To large for what? > Better start coding now and produce some useful (Lisp) software.
I don't think _CL_ is too large - that's just a language. I'm concerned about the image size, simply because I know that the clients who use my software are concerned about such things. If they ask for software that can be delivered on a single floppy, then that's what they get. I'm also concerned about support for things like OCX, as there are OCX controls that I need to use. If Lisp can't use OCX, then I can't use Lisp.
In case I didn't make it clear before, I don't choose the software I get paid to write. If you want to, you can only write software that Lisp implementations can deliver. That could be why so few apps use Lisp, and why those that do have such a low profile.
If you're saying that we should choose Lisp and then the software we can write with it, then I'd suggest that you're ignoring the problem by sticking your head in the sand. I'm writing multimedia Windows apps, not by choice but _because I can_, and not insignificantly because I get paid to. I know that I'm not unique in this respect.
If I could get paid to write something else, in Lisp, then that's what I'd be doing. I'm working on it. I'm rather unusual in _that_ respect. If I succeeded, then I might say I was one of the lucky elite.
Do you really think that elitism helps Lisp? I don't. I think it's at the heart of the problem. If you can live with most people thinking that Lisp is dead, then this isn't a problem for you. I'm dealing with it by doing something very different, by looking for alternatives like Dylan. Take a _close_ look at Dylan. _That's the kind of Lisp I want, and in a few years I might get it. -- <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
| RPL is the programming language for HP28 and HP48. Guess what RPL | stands for. Reverse Polish Lisp?
[Robert Sanders]
| You're reaching. RPL is very similar to Forth, and has almost nothing | in common with Lisp. I wish it did.
hmmm. the only similarity to Forth I remember is the stack representation of arguments and return values. one might as well say PostScript.
I have also heard that RPL stands for Reverse Polish Lisp internally to HP, and it's not a joke. I wrote a fair amount of code in System RPL a few years back (the internal language, related to RPL like Emacs Lisp to Emacs' commands). RPL has dynamic types, type dispatch, garbage collection, many functions with Lispy names, lambda forms (local variables), etc. it also has a number of features that are not lispy at all, and which _could_ be used to contradict any assessment of RPL as "Lispy".
#\Erik -- those who do not know Lisp are doomed to reimplement it
In article <chewy-0709960746200...@ppp-18.ts-1.la.idt.net> ch...@chelsea.ios.com "Paul Snively" writes:
> GNU EMACS, AutoCAD, and Abuse all fall into the category of software with > a high-performance core in C/C++ and an interpreter for some dialect of > Lisp, principally so that they can be extended by use of a > highly-expressive language. It's interesting that Abuse, a side-scrolling > arcade-style action game, is extended via a Lisp interpreter. Guess > performance was acceptable after all.
Have you noticed that the mainstream computer press tend not to mention this? It's been a number of years since I last read anything about AutoLisp in a magazine. I've hardly _ever_ seen a reference to Emacs in a mag, but when I do, Lisp is never mentioned. I must be reading the wrong mags, obviously.
My point (if you look back that far) was that Lisp doesn't have a high profile. Nobody has yet disputed that. It's true that products, like AutoCAD, that use Lisp have a high profile, but that's not the same thing. If HotMetal is written in Lisp, where does the manual say this? I've yet to read a review that mentions it, either.
If magazines like Byte mentioned Lisp only 10% as often as C++ then Lisp might have a much higher profile that it does as present, and _perhaps_ there might be more interest in it. I don't blame such magazines for not covering Lisp as much as they used to, as they've got so much more software to cover now.
> >I recently checked the manual for the Windows version of HotMetal, > >and there was no mention of Lisp at all. It appears to be a well > >kept secret.
> SoftQuad, the creators of HoTMetaL Pro and HoTMetaL Free, are a well-known > entity in a little-known market, namely the SGML market, where Scheme is > becoming an increasingly-accepted vehicle for implementing the > complexities of conformant SGML support. If you look around the various > HoTMetaL directories after installing, you will indeed find one (HoTMetaL > Free) or more (HoTMetaL Pro) .scm files.
These files are binary, in the Windows version of HotMetal. It's impossible to tell that they have any connection with Scheme. Not everyone knows as much as we do about Lisp, so most people will just have to guess that .scm is somehow related to Scheme, and that Scheme is a dialect of Lisp, and that perhaps HotMetal is written in Lisp.
That looks like a well kept secret to me.
> >There's a browser and web server written in ML (at CMU), but they > >only run on certain Unix machines. Meanwhile, MS are busy promoting > >ActiveX, ISAPI, etc. No wonder so many people think that you need > >C++ to write Internet software.
> The reason that so many people think that you need C++ to write Internet > software is that the Internet was built around UNIX, hence C, and C++ is > hair [sic] apparent to C.
Plus, companies like MS are busy telling everyone that C/C++ is necessary. Perhaps they're saying this because that's what they sell, but not everyone will be cynical to suspect that.
> >Lisp needs some much better PR, like a few killer apps written in > >Lisp, and a lot of noise making sure that everybody knows it.
> I wonder why the above-mentioned "hybrid software" isn't compelling? > Perhaps because not everyone needs or wants it. It has occurred to me > more than once that in all of the instances in which I haven't cared about > some of Common Lisp's shortcomings, such as a huge price of admission in > terms of memory consumption, it's been for the obvious reason that Common > Lisp's baggage has been dwarved by the application-specific code that I've > brought to the party. In other words, I tend to use Common Lisp for large > projects--much, much larger than I'd be willing to contemplate writing, > let alone debugging, in C++. Which leads me to a follow-up thought: is it > perhaps possible that C/C++ are the McDonald's of software > development--billions served, utterly pervasive, highly consistent > results--while the Lisp family of languages is the Antoine's or the Ma > Maison--high price of admission, extremely high quality, and really only > applicable to special occassions, but on those special occassions you're > not going to go to McDonald's, right?
This supports my suspicion that Lisp programmers are elitists. ;-) Why are people so obsessed with using small apps? Perhaps coz they have "small" jobs to do. This reminds me an example given in comp.sys.super recently, comparing the big supers to the much smaller machines that non-supercomputing people use. (Super heroes vs Bycicle Repair Man.)
Curiously, VB programmers have promoted VB by claiming it has virtues that sound similar to many of the virtues of Lisp. Rapid development, easy reuse of tools (in the form of VBX and OCX controls), friendly debugging, an FFI, etc. These programmers could be the ultimate Bycycle Repair Men.
What VB _lacks_ is perhaps more important, but not enough to stop it being extremely popular. Give MS the credit for that! It's success is not necessarily only due to the qualities of the product itself. VB lacks the introspection of CL, OO features like classes, closures and functions as first class objects.
My favourite distinction is a very simple one. Every time I look at a Lisp, which in my case will be running under NT, I ask myself if it would be better for Windows apps that just happen to be written in Lisp, or Lisp apps that just happen to run under Windows. I doubt that many Windows users will care what language an app is written in, but they _will_ care whether it functions as a good Windows app, exploiting the features of that OS.
This should apply to any other OS, too. For example, I'd expect Mac users to be no less demanding. This means that users won't want an app that only runs in the development enviroment that created it. They'll want a stand-alone app that looks like all the other apps they use. Those apps may well be written in C++, so Lisp will have to compete with the capabilities of C++ for that OS.
Lisp may even have to compete with other development tools like VB, HyperCard, etc - and now Java.
> >I do mean _a lot_, esp if you want to drown out the message that > >"C++ is best", which is currently dominant. Believe it or not, but > >there are actually a few people who don't even know Lisp _exists_.
> As there are people scratching their heads and asking "What's Antoine's?" > or "What's Ma Maison?" (Answer: Antoine's is perhaps the most famous > restaurant in New Orleans; Ma Maison is a restaurant of similar repute in > Los Angeles.)
Do you think that this might be possible? Would the regulars at Ma Maison or Antoine's want to attract the customers of McDonald's? Would that be a good thing?
Fortunately, we're discussing a programming language. Why should the users of Lisp be elitist?
> >On the other hand, perhaps Lisp is just for the elitists.
> Ha! I hadn't even read this far when I started to reply! How funny.
I'd be laughing if it wasn't so sad. I want to write software that "ordinary people" can use. If I can't do it in Lisp, then I'll have to use something else, like C++. Which is exactly what I'm doing, and so are a lot of other people.
> >Fair enough, > >but that might explain why so few of us can use it. Please note the > >"can". In theory, I can use Lisp, and I do use it. However, nobody > >will know that I use it unless I tell them
> How will anyone _know_ that you use C++, either, unless you tell them? > They might _assume_ so. I've surprised people before by handing them a > piece of software that they "knew" was in C++, until I explained to them > that Oberon is a pretty cool language.
This is why I started writting a Lisp to C compiler. I _know_ I can fool people with it (once it supports a few useful features, like a GUI, files, etc). I doubt I can do it with ACL.
> >and even then they're > >unlikely to ever see the software I write in Lisp, as I can't give > >them stand-alone binary.
> Funny; I've got standalone binaries for the applications I build using > Macintosh Common Lisp. Granted, they're a bit hefty to fit on floppies, > but anything that takes >2 HD floppies will be cheaper to distribute on > CD-ROM anyway.
CD-ROM would be wonderful, but it's not always practical Some users only have floppies, and some software is aimed at exactly those users. Not because they use floppies, but coz we _know_ they'll have an old machine. That's a "special case", but it's a real one. Some users can't choose their hardware, so we have to write the software they can use, instead of the software we'd like them to use.
Ideally, we'd just demand that all users have a CD-ROM drive and any other hardware needed to run our software. Perhaps in an ideal world we'd all be using Macs, but the real world isn't like that. I prefer to be pragmatic and look at the things I can do. Sadly, that means I don't get to use Lisp for work I do. If I get asked to use an OCX control, and I don't have a Lisp that can use OCX controls, then...
As soon as I'm asked to write an app that ACL can deliver, then I'll be happy to use it. _Very_ happy. That's coz I'm pro Lisp. My boss thinks that HotMetal written Lisp is "cool", so at least he's not anti Lisp. He used and loved Actor, when it was available.
I'm optimistic, but it'll really depend on which Windows features are supported by Lisps like ACL for Windows, and it delivers them (image size, etc). -- <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
On Sat, 07 Sep 1996 02:08:04 +0200, jos...@lavielle.com (Rainer Joswig) wrote: >Why did people port Lisp to Mainframes or SIMD machines? Just for >fun?
I really think that it was mostly for fun. While functional languages _are_ real good for parallelism and SIMD architectures in particular, (Common) Lisp is as far from the word "functional" as Smalltalk or Pascal is.
>Why is the CMU archive full of Lisp stuff?
Why are FTP sites of the world full of free C/C++ stuff ? The ratio is not on the Lisp side :-)
>If you look closely you will find them. Otherwise it would >be unexplainable, why there are so many Lisp implementations. >Or can you tell, why there are still Common Lisp vendors? >How do they manage to pay their employees? Somebody >buys this stuff.
You don't need to look closely to find C/C++/Fortran/... - based applications. Most non-commercial Lisp implementation are done just for the implementor's fun. Others are usually written in universities by a group of enthusiastic implementors that get some funding for the project that needs Lisp (in their opinion).
Commercial versions of Lisp exist in the small market niche that is self-supported, much analogous to the market niche of mainframe computers and "real" OOD tools. They are working with couple hundred of buyers (historically devoted to their product) each, getting major bucks for every copy to cover R&D and support costs, supporting in their products just what this limited group of customers needs. This explains their ten-twenty year old user interfaces and strong cross-platform orientation. The latter (bad thing in my opinion) implies slow (if any) adoption of new operating system features, once again poor UI, usually restricted by the common denominator of what's available on all supported systems, and the tendency to ignore completely the issues of shrink-wrapped distribution of the software developed on this system.
>Saying "I like CL" is kind of childish. I use CL, because >I do have a need for an interactive development system. >I can quite comfortably explore my ideas using CL. >If you can't - well - be happy and use something else >that is more suitable to your problem.
I like Scheme and I like Smalltalk and I like Haskell and it's not childish at all. If I could do all the things I do at work in one of the languages I really like, I would be much more happy than I am right now. The obstacle is not the language itself, it's the particular misfeatures of available implementations / development environments. I feel from my "hobby" experience that I could be much more productive with, say, Lisp instead of C++ given the IDE of the same power and capabilities that I have now. Pity, there is none.
>Btw, we *really* need a web site that people see Lisp is still alive.
What we really need is some work done in implementing really modern Lisp development environments that suit the developers now targetting C/C++ and using these to implement real applications that most people use everyday. Just talking about Lisp be it in computer magazines, on the WWW site or on the radio won't buy Lisp an ounce of popularity. It probably will support the corpse alive for some time... Flatlined...
In article <ey3d8zzrea0....@staffa.aiai.ed.ac.uk>, Tim Bradshaw
<t...@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote: >But but. How big is Netscape this week? How big is Word? These >systems are just *vast*, but very popular.
Actually, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Word are vast. I'd only go so far as to say that they're half-vast.*
* Still don't get it? Try reading the sentence out loud. -- To get random signatures put text files into a folder called ³Random Signatures² into your Preferences folder.
Why not? Has been done. Hey, what makes you think you can't write CGI scripts in Lisp?
> Excellent. Too bad so few people use Macs.
Yep, only some ten millions users. Not much.
> Meanwhile, most of the world uses Windows. Making a hit on > _that_ platform would do far more for Lisp than on the Mac.
Windows doesn't interest me personally that much. Still, a small, fast and sexy CL implementation for Windows (NT) won't hurt and I'd surely would have a usage for it. ;-)
> such things. If they ask for software that can be delivered > on a single floppy, then that's what they get.
Floppies are anachronisms. I'm not using floppies very often these days. Which games are still being delivered on floppies? Some Mac games are being delivered on three CD-ROMs.
> like Dylan. Take a _close_ look at Dylan.
I have Apple Dylan on my machine. Still CL is much more stable, has a larger user base, has tons of code, is supported, ... and does useful work for me. I'd like to see CL advancing. (And Dylan lacks Lisp's syntax! ;-) )
> _That's the > kind of Lisp I want, and in a few years I might get it.
Why is it that PC users get this stuff years later?
So what can we learn? What are other users or would be users thinking? Seems like *some* PC users are not satisfied with current choices. Other opinions? Seems like a lot of CL users work on Unix, Macs or even Lispms. Is this perception correct? Shouldn't the PC market be *much* larger than the others combined?
Ben Greenfield <b...@panix.com> wrote: > i also enjoy the book dylan programming i'm using apple dylan tr and > was curious if you were also.
> if you were i was curious how you manuvered around the lack of > function format-out.
I have been using the Apple Dylan TR, but I have not yet attempted following the tutorial using it. Besides the lack of format-out(), I have encountered problems with things like "constant" slot declarations (apparently) not being supported correctly, so I haven't attempted to implement the tutorial yet.
[I don't know whether we should continue this thread on comp.lang.lisp, so if this goes on, let's consider limiting it to comp.lang.dylan --Chris]
........................................................................... Chris Page Software Wrangler This message was created using Cyberdog Claris Corporation - a product of Apple Computer, Inc. mailto:p...@best.com http://www.best.com/~page/ ...........................................................................
* Cyber Surfer wrote: > I recently checked the manual for the Windows version of HotMetal, > and there was no mention of Lisp at all. It appears to be a well > kept secret.
It is. It's actually in some kind of scheme dialect I think (with some C runtime support). Perhaps someone at softquad reads this group & could comment?
In article <841846372...@wildcard.demon.co.uk> cyber_sur...@wildcard.demon.co.uk writes: >In article <Dx50Mu.2uo.0.macb...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> > j...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk "Jeff Dalton" writes: >> In any case, while the dice may well _be_ loaded, Lisp systems >> could preduce much smaller executables than they usually do.
>> Indeed, a Lisp could fairly easily produce a "Hello, world!" >> program that's as small as a C one. Suppose the source code >> was:
>> (format t "Hello, World!~%")
>> It doesn't need to alloc anything at run-time, so no GC is needed.
>It doesn't need to statically link, either. However, all the >compiled Lisps I've used have delivered code in a statically >linked image file.
How about WCL? It packages Cl itself as a shared library and presumably allows you to construct shared libraries too.
Anyway, statically linked executables can be small.
>> Ah, soemone will say, what if you write slightly larger >> programs. Then you'll have the GC and all that other Lisp >> stuff. Probably you will. But such things can be pretty >> small. Most Lisp implementatinos are pretty big these >> days, but they can be very small. (N.B. Lisp does not = >> Common Lisp; but even Common Lisps could produce vastly >> smaller executables than they typically do.)
>Yes, just avoid static linking.
I'm not quite sure just what you have in mind here, but for most Lisps it's not a simple change. These Lisps don't use the ordinary linker/loader. Instead, code is loaded into a running Lisp and then an image of the thus modified Lisp is saved. If, instead, the compiler could turn Lisp source files into .o files that could be statically linked with code from various libraries, you could get much smaller executables despite using static linking.
"Tree shaking" and the like can also help, but work by discarding rather than by never including in the 1st place.
I don't know about Unix, but
>a programming language for Win16/Win32 that uses static linking >only will be seen as a very poor tool. Never mind issues like >GC performance. Even a _C compiler_ for Win16/Win32 has to >support dynamic linking in order to be accepted as a serious >development tool. This isn't a language issue - it's a delivery >issue. Maybe this is different for Unix, but for Windows, a >"larger than necessary" binary is considered to be unforgivable.
Humm. Some of them sure _look_ larger than necessary.
>It's subjective, of course, but both users and developers are >very sensitive to the code size, and yes, all those enourmous >Windows apps _are_ heavily criticised for being _too big_. If >it wasn't for all those features, nobody would put up with it. >In fact, some people _don't_. That's part of the problem...
> ... > I think of Java in many ways, but mainly as a step toward ending > the love affair that so many programmers have with C/C++. It'll > introduce them to some "new" ideas, even if Lisp programmers have > known and used them for years. Many Smalltalk programmers may > also be laughing, and I won't blame them. > ...
> i do not know what you are trying to say here. whatever lisp programmers > have "known and used" is on the fingertips of every sixteen year old who > can hold a keyboard these days. [in the case of lincoln-sudbury highschool > this was probably true more than a decade ago :)] java has nothing to do > with it, except packaging. new generation of programmers appear to know > the tricks of the trade, if not the history.
How many 16 year olds are using closures and higher order functions? I don't know. Perhaps they're still at school, and using MIT Scheme? I wouldn't say that every 16 year old uses these things, even if they have learned to program.
Java has a lot "to do with it", coz that's the language that appears to get the most attention, at least in the media. In a few years we'll know just what _real_ impact Java will have. Perhaps C++ is just a passing fad, and the majority of programmers 10 years from now will be using Lisp, or something like it (ML, Dylan, whatever).
I've seen more books about Java that've been published in the last year than all the Lisp books I've seen. There are certainly more Lisp books than I've seen, but there are also a lot more Java books that I've not yet seen.
So, we can at least say that there's a lot of interest in Java from book publishers. What can we conclude from this? History is written by the winning side, but does that mean that Java is "winning"? MS and Sun are heavily promoting Java. Why should they tell anyone that the ideas in Java originally came from languages like Lisp? I've not read anything from MS that mentions Lisp.
I'm currently waiting to see if MS will offer Java as an alternative to VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), as that would allow any tools written for and with Java to work with any of the MS apps that used to use VBA. (Imagine if VB could generate code for the JVM.)
Since Apple have also adopted Java (boo, hiss / sulk), perhaps they too will employ Java in a few key places, where previously some other language has been used.
It might then be possible to write code for these apps in _Lisp_. Today, a few apps like AutoCAD can be extended in Lisp (e.g. AutoLisp), but wouldn't it be great if many of the languages unique to a single app or vendor could be replaced by Lisp?
This is why I suspect that Java could help Lisp. At the very least it could open the eyes of a few programmers who're obsessed with the low level view of programming that C/C++ encourages. It might also help us give Lisp a higher profile. -- <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
On 09 Sep 1996 11:29:04 +0100, Tim Bradshaw <t...@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>> I recently checked the manual for the Windows version of HotMetal, >> and there was no mention of Lisp at all. It appears to be a well >> kept secret.
>It is. It's actually in some kind of scheme dialect I think (with >some C runtime support). Perhaps someone at softquad reads this group >& could comment?
Looks like they used Scheme for what most SGML people are using it now: DSSSL (I always forget how many S to write :-)), which is basically a Scheme-like language for describing SGML stylesheets.
