If you were trying to convince the management to move to LISP, what
would you say or do?

sounds like your friend needs to price the tools as well. linux and
cmucl would be free, fwiw, but even commercial stuff is not too
expensive and management might get a warm fuzzy off a commercial vendor.

kenny
clinisys

     > I think I will post to the same message on comp.lang.smalltak only varying
     > one word...

It had already been done.  But not to any other group---is
Smalltalk the only competitor to Lisp when it comes to finding a
non-Java solution?

---Vassil.

you have to declare that.

you posting is missleading.

Here are some highlights:

"My team will be able to program circles around everyone else. They
will be able to construct rapidly a language specific to the problem
we are solving rather than using a language designed by computer
scientists worrying about their place in history and a herd of
library writers working in cubicles a thousand miles from our
business."

"I will be able to point to various examples where Lisp programmers
have written not only 3-5 times faster, but they wrote things other
programmers thought were impossible."

"Because Lisp is dead, I'll get better programmers for less money.
I'll be able to guarantee 50 more IQ points for the same pay."

"I'll be compatible with everything because it is right now. And if
someone throws me a bug, I can code around it in a few minutes."

I agree with most of this, except for Lisp being dead. ;)

not only that, but I would make each message refer to the one on the other
group.

the one word was the usenet group, each pointing to the other.
I had figured it would have been funny to someone who reads both groups...

    *> Vassil Nikolov wrote:
    >> On Sat, 05 Oct 2002 19:16:53 -0700, cr88192
    >> <cr88...@hotmail.nospam.com> said:
    >>
    >> > I think I will post to the same message on comp.lang.smalltak only
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    >> > varying one word...
    >>
    >> It had already been done.  But not to any other group---is
    >> Smalltalk the only competitor to Lisp when it comes to finding a
    >> non-Java solution?
    >>
    *> the original poster had posted nearly identical messages to both groups, I
    *> had thought if would be funny to do similar as a reply to each version...

I see now.  I read the message to which I responded as if it said
`I will post the same message...' while in fact it meant `I will
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                             ^^^^^^
respond to the same message...'
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And my question (whether only Lisp and Smalltalk can be considered
for a non-Java solution) refers to the fact that the original posts
of those nearly identical messages were in just those two
newsgroups.

---Vassil.

  I have no experience with convincing management to move to Common Lisp,
  but as a consultant to companies who already had failure on their hands,
  or a problem to which they did not know a solution, offering Common Lisp
  and a significantly better chance to succeed has not been met with much
  resistance.  Now, as a consultant, they may have trusted /me/ rather than
  my tools and may well have called me in the first place to help them out
  of their predicament, so what experience I have may not be all that useful
  to somebody else.  However, one thing should be generally applicable:

  Size up the problem and spend as little company resources as possible to
  determine that you can solve the problem.  This may involve solving part
  of it for "free", just to demonstrate how you would do things.  This
  achieves two separate goals.  The first is to show your management that
  you know your stuff and that they should trust you with the problem.  The
  second is to show your management that you are willing to take risks of
  your own in order to "prove" something to them.  Normally, both of these
  are valued by your management.  If not, seek employment elsewhere, as
  they do not trust you or appreciate your efforts to solve their problems.

  To really succeed, tell your management about what you intend to do up
  front, and show that you can do the preliminary work without involving a
  lot of people and that you can deliver what you promised on time, then
  show them what you need in order to finish the task.  If you have a track
  record of delivering on time, that also helps a lot.

  Note that this stresses "do" over "say".  "Say" alone never cuts it.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Thanks to all those who have posted their suggestions.

Steve

===

my fault.

for some reason i don't see the original post of "Steve Graham" in this
newsgroups.

so i thought you copy his message, change the word (smalltalk => LISP)
an post a reply here.

sorry I couldn't really add much useful to the conversation, I am off a bit
messing with my own prog lang, which I have not been able to put too much
work into recently as I have been quite busy otherwise...

How do they (or you) deal with the Lisp code maintenance issue after you're
done?

Thanks. Cheers.

 Ng> I read this to mean some of these companies calling on you were not using
 Ng> Common Lisp in the first place.

 Ng> How do they (or you) deal with the Lisp code maintenance issue
 Ng> after you're done?

I would assume that they deal with it in the same way as anything
else.  They either hire the original programmer again, or if they
don't want to do that, they hire someone else who has the same skills?

  With support contracts.  I always ensure that I have people who can take
  over for me.  Sometimes, customers have wanted to rewrite things that
  work into a more "mainstream" language.  These projects have always
  failed, however.  I find that moderately amusing, because no matter how
  hard you try to blame someone else for your failure, a working system
  simply and effectively mocks every attempt.  People whose purpose it is
  get their job done, do not desire to rewrite systems because some new
  manager has been to a Java conference and needs to defend the expenses.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

There are lots of Common Lisp programmers who will gladly bail their
C++ or Java job to get paid to work with the intelligent language that
they know. If you hire these people, you are not only getting a Lisp
programmer, but a C++, Java or whatever programmer in the same
package. This individual will be grateful for an opportunity to write
software right, and work hard for you.

If you advertize a Lisp job anywhere, it will nicely stand out,
because it won't be listed alongside three hundred identical postings,
and whereas the stack of applications that you get will probably be
substantially smaller than if you advertised a (for instance) C++ or
Java development position, it will have a far lower proportion of
unqualified applicants.

As a last resort, you could always offer the job to someone who is
well qualified, having a track record in design and implementation
using some other languages, and who is willing to pick up Lisp. That
person will probably make some mistakes, such as choosing poor data
representations and approaches, but the result will likely still be
superior, and as that individual learns more, Lisp will allow the old
design decisions to be refactored with great ease.

Unpopular programming languages do not attract unqualified people in
droves. You get the odd moron and a bit of lunatic fringe (consider
recent Usenet examples such as of ``ilias'' and ``gnuist007'') but
that's it.

My question was in the context of a consultant coming into a company
without prior Lisp experience and concurrently facing failure in some
project, where consultant then delivers some end product in Lisp.  Erik has
answered that very clearly. (Thanks.)

Cheers.