Why learn LISP?

Bill House

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Sep 4, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/4/97

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Andrew Criswell <ar...@ksc15.th.com> wrote in article
<34100a5a...@news.ksc.co.th>...
>
>[snip]
>
> So, I hope someone can convince me otherwise. To my casual eye, the
> programme is eloquent. Is it something to be studied for its internal
> beauty and nothing more?
>
Lisp is an excellent language for certain application domains. In particular,
areas such as machine learning, deductive databases, language design and
implementation, etc. I have worked on one Lisp application that has a 3-year
track record of making stock picks that outperform the S&P 100, as well as most
money managers (yet, it's a balanced fund). See http://www.korns.com for more
info on a real-world Lisp application that produces something a great deal more
negotiable than beauty.

Bill House
--
http://www.housewebs.com
Note: My e-mail address has been altered to confuse spambots

Mark Greenaway

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Sep 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/5/97

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ar...@ksc15.th.com (Andrew Criswell) writes:

>This question is sincerely asked. I am not a professional programmer,
>nor a computer scientist, just someone who is casually interesting in
>programming, especially in the fields of finance and econometrics. I
>have read through most of Winston and Horn's "Lisp", 3rd edition, and
>I must admit by the end I see very little use to put to LISP, either
>in my field or any other, especially when you take into account the
>many other programming languages available on the market that allow
>for neat user interaction.

Better mathematical support. Arguably better tools. The ability to
prototype systems incredibly quickly and arguably do things easily that
are difficult to do well in other languages. Dynamism. The ability to
change things at run-time, without bringing the whole system down.

>So, I hope someone can convince me otherwise. To my casual eye, the
>programme is eloquent. Is it something to be studied for its internal
>beauty and nothing more?

I would be tempted to say that about Scheme. But Scheme makes a fantastic
macro language for applications, among other things.
--
Mark
Certified Waifboy And when they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out? Will you defend me?
http://www.st.nepean.uws.edu.au/~mgreenaw - Ich bin ein Auslander, PWEI

ManRodSr

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Sep 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/5/97

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Thats a wonderful reply and very similar to what I read in a book
somewhere that first got me interested. since I've started, every little
step along the learning curve has been exciting. However, I am wondering
how you are able to get into graphics when my very first question to the
group was along those very lines and I was led to believe that we could not
do graphics with lisp.
did I misunderstand something?

Erik Naggum

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Sep 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/5/97

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* manr...@aol.com

| I was led to believe that we could not do graphics with lisp.
| did I misunderstand something?

you can't do graphics in any language. first, you need library support
functions and lots and lots of external system software to handle the
graphics for you. now you can do graphics in all languages.

#\Erik
--
404 You're better off without that file. Trust me.

Christopher Browne

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Sep 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/5/97

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On 5 Sep 1997 16:33:33 GMT, manr...@aol.com (ManRodSr) wrote:
>Thats a wonderful reply and very similar to what I read in a book
>somewhere that first got me interested. since I've started, every little
>step along the learning curve has been exciting. However, I am wondering
>how you are able to get into graphics when my very first question to the

>group was along those very lines and I was led to believe that we could not

>do graphics with lisp.
>did I misunderstand something?

There are no commands intrinsic to LISP for doing graphics, much as
there are no commands intrinsic to C, Perl, C++, FORTRAN, Scheme, APL,
Java, and any number of other languages that seek to (in some form)
represent a sort of "abstract machine."

In contrast, there are a few computer languages such as Postscript and
a number of dialects of BASIC that include graphics commands as
intrinsic parts of the language.

However, all of the languages in the previous list (and, to the point
here, LISP) have nothing preventing implementations from creating
interfaces to graphics "libraries" of one variety or another. And
people do commonly use all of these language to "do graphics."

LISP Machines (once sold by Symbolics and LMI) were examples of
LISP-based systems that had a great deal of graphical support; they
had rather sophisticated graphical user interface environments
implemented in LISP.

"Better LISP implementations" should, these days, include some form of
interface to the graphics infrastructure provided by the underlying
operating system.

If you're on a UNIX-like system, common LISP implementations tend to
include interfaces of some sort to the X Windows system. Commercial
LISPs for Microsoft's windowing systems have similar interfaces.
Ditto for Macintosh-based LISPs.

In such cases, LISP can be used to develop systems with graphical
interfaces.

If you are running LISP under MS-DOS, it is quite likely that the
capabilities will be rather more limited, as MS-DOS provides only the
most rudimentary graphic services.
Chris Browne - cbbr...@hex.net, <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne>
Q: Where would Microsoft take you today?
A: Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis...

Steven D. Majewski

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Sep 5, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/5/97

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In article <19970905163...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,

ManRodSr <manr...@aol.com> wrote:
>Thats a wonderful reply and very similar to what I read in a book
>somewhere that first got me interested. since I've started, every little
>step along the learning curve has been exciting. However, I am wondering
>how you are able to get into graphics when my very first question to the
>group was along those very lines and I was led to believe that we could not
>do graphics with lisp.
>did I misunderstand something?

As others have noted, Graphics support is not usually part of a language.

Most versions of Lisp or Scheme I've tried have some sort of graphics
support. Since you said your background was in economics, you might take
a look at XlispStat -- a version of Lisp with support for statistics and
statistical graphics. It's not a great tool for writing general GUI
code, but for numerical graphic applications, it's great: built in
support for 2d and 3d scatterplots, linked plots ( so that plots
selected in one graph are automatically selected in another ), etc.

There are lots of links to papers, software, and other tools at
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/

If you want a more generalized ( and thus more low level ) graphics
toolkit, you might look at Stk -- scheme + Tk.

---| Steven D. Majewski (804-982-0831) <sd...@Virginia.EDU> |---
---| Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics |---
---| University of Virginia Health Sciences Center |---
---| P.O. Box 10011 Charlottesville, VA 22906-0011 |---
All power corrupts and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely." - Ted Nelson

Bill Coderre

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Sep 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/8/97

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manr...@aol.com (ManRodSr) wrote:
| Thats a wonderful reply and very similar to what I read in a book
| somewhere that first got me interested. since I've started, every little
| step along the learning curve has been exciting. However, I am wondering
| how you are able to get into graphics when my very first question to the
| group was along those very lines and I was led to believe that we could not
| do graphics with lisp.
| did I misunderstand something?

There's something called the Common Lisp Interface Manager, which is
supposed to be a set of standard GUI code, so that people can carry Lisp
code from one platform to another without re-writing. I don't know what
happened to it; is it dead, people?

Most Lisps have their own set of extensions to do graphics. Most of them
are really easy to use. For instance, Mac Common Lisp from Digitool is so
darn easy that they teach you pretty much everything you need to know in
about 10 pages of their "Getting started" pamphlet.

You can get a LOT of graphics code to go with just about any Lisp by
saying the magic incantation:

"I have <this kind of> Lisp on <this particular> platform, and I'm a rank
beginner looking for some simple graphics code to cut my teeth on. Anybody
got any spare?"

Note that the ONE thing that this group gets WAY too much of is people
trolling around going, "Lisp can't do this, Lisp can't do that," looking
for some kind of flame war. Therefore people sometimes mis-read questions
such as yours as the trolling flame-bait that we despise. This is not your
fault, of course, but it could affect the replies you get.

bc

Marco Antoniotti

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Sep 8, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/8/97

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In article <bc-080997...@17.127.10.41> b...@wetware.com (Bill Coderre) writes:

From: b...@wetware.com (Bill Coderre)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 12:11:57 -0700
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manr...@aol.com (ManRodSr) wrote:

| do graphics with lisp.
| did I misunderstand something?

There's something called the Common Lisp Interface Manager, which is
supposed to be a set of standard GUI code, so that people can carry Lisp
code from one platform to another without re-writing. I don't know what
happened to it; is it dead, people?

Most Lisps have their own set of extensions to do graphics. Most of them
are really easy to use. For instance, Mac Common Lisp from Digitool is so
darn easy that they teach you pretty much everything you need to know in
about 10 pages of their "Getting started" pamphlet.

However this is part of the problem. All the commercial Lisps out
there have CLIM ported to them. However, Harlequin is pushing CAPI,
Franz is pushing Common Windows and Digitool (last time I checked),
isn't offering CLIM.

This is no good. Especially considering that CLIM was originally a
"vendor's standard".

Alas, this is an old gripe, so you mustn't pay too much attention to
it.

Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti
==============================================================================
California Path Program - UC Berkeley
Richmond Field Station
tel. +1 - 510 - 231 9472

William Paul Vrotney

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Sep 9, 1997, 3:00:00 AM9/9/97

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In article <bc-080997...@17.127.10.41> b...@wetware.com (Bill Coderre)
writes:

>

> manr...@aol.com (ManRodSr) wrote:
> | Thats a wonderful reply and very similar to what I read in a book
> | somewhere that first got me interested. since I've started, every little
> | step along the learning curve has been exciting. However, I am wondering
> | how you are able to get into graphics when my very first question to the
> | group was along those very lines and I was led to believe that we could not

> | do graphics with lisp.
> | did I misunderstand something?
>
> There's something called the Common Lisp Interface Manager, which is
> supposed to be a set of standard GUI code, so that people can carry Lisp
> code from one platform to another without re-writing. I don't know what
> happened to it; is it dead, people?
>

I recently completed a Lisp project using CLIM. Worked fine.

--

William P. Vrotney - vro...@netcom.com