Slashdot
Kent M Pitman
Feel free to contribute comments or to answer the comments of non-believers.
Let's make the Lisp community look alive, folks.
Kaz Kylheku
This is aggravating; I made one lengthy response with some programming
example, and I couldn't post it (nor even preview it) on grounds of some
``lameness detector'' which detected too many ``bogus characters''.
Needless to say, I couldn't figure out how to edit the submission to
satisfy the lameness detector, so I gave up.
That is too bad, because I had a good point, and spent some time
preparing the response.
David McClain
Cheers,
- David McClain
Kaz Kylheku
>Please post your message here so we can all see it!
I've reworked it and resubmitted it. Only, I did not include the macro
example that I originally wanted.
Kaz Kylheku
I've reworked it and resubmitted it after all. Only, I did not include
Kent M Pitman
Thanks. Discussion over there is better than over here, I think.
That way a different crew of people gets to see it. It also contributes
to a sense of diversity in our community. I don't want to be the only
one posting. (I'd bore people even more than I probably already did in
the interview, and anyway, my point of view is not the only one.)
Marco Antoniotti
Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> writes:
> k...@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) writes:
>
> > In article <JyAG7.738$ai.1...@news.uswest.net>, David McClain wrote:
> > >Please post your message here so we can all see it!
> >
> > I've reworked it and resubmitted it after all. Only, I did not include
> > the macro example that I originally wanted.
>
> Thanks. Discussion over there is better than over here, I think.
Well, lots of trolls too :)
> That way a different crew of people gets to see it. It also contributes
> to a sense of diversity in our community. I don't want to be the only
> one posting. (I'd bore people even more than I probably already did in
> the interview, and anyway, my point of view is not the only one.)
I guess the value of the slashdot discussion is that it forces me
(us?!?) to take into account other opinions.
I posted on ML languages and refrained from posting about Python
(tllotbafir). I feel I did a good thing today :)
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Kent M Pitman
> Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> writes:
>
> > k...@ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) writes:
> >
> > > In article <JyAG7.738$ai.1...@news.uswest.net>, David McClain wrote:
> > > >Please post your message here so we can all see it!
> > >
> > > I've reworked it and resubmitted it after all. Only, I did not include
> > > the macro example that I originally wanted.
> >
> > Thanks. Discussion over there is better than over here, I think.
>
> Well, lots of trolls too :)
Sorry, I meant it's preferrable to DO the same discussion there rather
than here. I did not mean to make a judgment comment about whether
the nature of the discussion there was of superior quality to any occurring
here.
> > That way a different crew of people gets to see it. It also contributes
> > to a sense of diversity in our community. I don't want to be the only
> > one posting. (I'd bore people even more than I probably already did in
> > the interview, and anyway, my point of view is not the only one.)
>
> I guess the value of the slashdot discussion is that it forces me
> (us?!?) to take into account other opinions.
And it allows others to talk to us. We get to be our own ambassadors.
What they learn is whatever we choose to say. When we fail to say
anything, they make up their own mind based on whatever misinformation
one person asserts out of nowhere and another scores as Interesting.
I think most of the misimpressions have been corrected and the scoring
has been doing ok about raising reasonable points to the top. I can imagine
better scoring mechanisms, but at least the remarks about Lisp being gay
all got marked as -1.
> I posted on ML languages and refrained from posting about Python
> (tllotbafir). I feel I did a good thing today :)
Sounds like it.
Wade Humeniuk
of points.
1) People are interested in Lisp but they would like Lisp to be more
mainstream. Sounds like lots have people have used Lisp and no longer use
Lisp or they would like to learn it but consider it duanting. I am curious
as to why that has happened. It is almost like people are intimidated by
the language. Maybe when it was taught the teachers espoused that it had
such great powers that people thought it could not be used for everyday
little things (like Word Processors ;)). This kind of fits with the guy who
said that Lispers are arrogant and insist that they have the BEST and the
most POWERFUL language.
Then people diss Lisp for all sorts of small details like, too many parans,
can't embed comments (????), slow execution (though lots of people use
Python, etc.). Can people be SCARED of Lisp?? Looking back to when I
started to learn Lisp I had some of those feelings. It was daunting to
learn, but good things take time and effort.
2) The expressed desire to have a more expressive GUI (someone mentioned
SWING). Better FLI support. Here again it seems to be a plea for Lisp to
become more mainstream (integrated) and that here should be less grunt work
to interface to other languages and toolkits. Does anyone know if those
graphical tools developed in the early Lisp implementations (3D engine,
image processing and such) could be brought back into the open for wider
spread use? Where has all the code gone? Is it in the Symbolics/Open
Genera distribution?
3) That Lisp really suffered because of the AI winter.
Wade
"Kent M Pitman" <pit...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:sfwlmhh...@shell01.TheWorld.com...
Gabe Garza
I'm going to give a lot my opinions. They're largely based on
introducing Lisp to a couple of professional programmers in a company
I interned for last summer (I fear I'm gonna be looking back on it as
my only period has a professional Common Lisp programmer... :(). I'm
obviously writing with far less experience and background then most of
the regulars on this newsgroup, so please bear with me....
> Then people diss Lisp for all sorts of small details like, too many parans,
> can't embed comments (????), slow execution (though lots of people use
> Python, etc.). Can people be SCARED of Lisp?? Looking back to when I
I agree that people are scared of Lisp. This past summer I convinced
by boss to let me use Common Lisp. I prototyped an application that
they were trying to get off the ground; my prototype ran an order of
magnitude faster on hardware that was an order of magnitude cheaper
(the increase didn't have as much to do with the language as with
using less naive algorithms). I then got the opportunity to
demonstrate Common Lisp to the group, both in a presentation and
one-on-one with a couple of the programmers. Here are a few of the
things I noticed they had a hard time with:
1.) The syntax. This is trivial to someone whose been exposed to a lot
of languages, but to some people, especially those who've only been
exposed to languages in one family (Pascal, for example), the syntax
becomes inextricably linked to the semantics of the language. It
seemed very bizarre to them.
2.) The development cycle. I think for a lot of people programming
gets reduced to "write, try to compile, fix syntax errors,
compile (optional with some languages), run, coredump (or watch
errors accumulate), repeat". Even languages that could be
developed in interactively (Python, for example) are often
used with the above idiom. The dynamic nature of the language
can be very hard to grasp.
3.) The reliance on the editor. With Lisp, learning the development
environment right off the bat is more critical then with other
languages. Notepad or vi just doesn't cut it.
4.) The efficiency model. This could be a book. :) A quick point:
to someone used to having to either declare the type of
everything or declare the type of nothing Common Lisp's
optional type declarations can seem confusing.
5.) Having never heard of the language.
6.) Being compiled and interpreted.
7.) The lack of books. Yes, there are some really great books on
Common Lisp. PAIP is superb. I've heard good things about
Graham's Lisp book. However, in general the people that tried
them had a hard time with them. Is there a book *in print* about
Common Lisp that doesn't emphasize recursion at all, doesn't
emphasizes the List data structure to the exclusion of hash
tables, vectors with fill pointers, etc., and doesn't mention
anything AI'ish? They'd go (yes, they actually went and
looked) looking for Lisp books in a book store and not find any
amid bookcases full of 33 thousand mostly horrid C++ and Java
books. It does give one a certain impression of the language.
8.) The lack of courses. One of the first questions my boss asked
was where it was taught. The typical places a professional
programmer might look to take a course (Community Colleges,
local state schools, etc.) don't even mention the language.
There are also some "new" misconceptions that I've noticed as a
(graduating this semester) CS undergrad at Berkeley. A lot of the
students here, both grads and undergrads, have an impression of Lisp
heavily tainted by Scheme, which is the only exposure most get. They
can't even conceive of a fast compiled Lisp with iterative constructs
and a huge library of useful functions.
> 2) The expressed desire to have a more expressive GUI (someone mentioned
> SWING). Better FLI support. Here again it seems to be a plea for Lisp to
> become more mainstream (integrated) and that here should be less grunt work
These criticisms I have a really hard time disagreeing with. :/ I
really would like to see stuff like multiprocessing, GUI (although
CLIM seems to the de facto standard for the last two), FFI, defsystem,
possibly POSIX interfaces, SQL interfaces, etc. standardized. I don't
necessarily mean "included in the standard for ANSI Common Lisp."
I just think that many different vendors providing a variety of
different interfaces to the same functionality is exactly the kind of
thing that standardization was invented for. Yes, it's possible to
write wrappers like CLOCC graciously provides. But having to use
wrappers to write portable code seems like a cry for standardization.
Incidently, CAPI and CLIM were both viewed *very* positively by the
people I showed them to this summer. Having a GUI that's source code
compatible between Windows and Unix was *huge* to them. Common Lisp's
portability is one of its many great strengths.
Gabe Garza
ObDisclaimer: I truly love Common Lisp. I'm not trying to bash it.
Let me be the first to acknowledge I don't know nearly as much about
it or its circumstances as many of the people here....
Kent M Pitman
> "Wade Humeniuk" <hume...@cadvision.com> writes:
>
> I'm going to give a lot my opinions. They're largely based on
> introducing Lisp to a couple of professional programmers in a company
> I interned for last summer (I fear I'm gonna be looking back on it as
> my only period has a professional Common Lisp programmer... :(). I'm
> obviously writing with far less experience and background then most of
> the regulars on this newsgroup, so please bear with me....
A fascinating analysis and very helpful. Thanks. I'm taking notes for
books I'm working on. The more of this kind of thoughtful analysis,
especially based on multiple real data points, the better.
Friedrich Dominicus
May I add some points and remarks? I was on a fair last week and got
some extra comments.
>
> 5.) Having never heard of the language.
5.a) having heard before from Lisp and are asking What Lisp is still
alive? And people are using it?
5.b) having worked with Lisp before and think of it as
- either too slow, too complex too....
- beeing lightyears beyond what was available to there time
>
> 6.) Being compiled and interpreted.
Usually question isn't Lisp an Intepreter ...
>
> 7.) The lack of books. Yes, there are some really great books on
> Common Lisp. PAIP is superb. I've heard good things about
> Graham's Lisp book. However, in general the people that tried
> them had a hard time with them. Is there a book *in print* about
> Common Lisp that doesn't emphasize recursion at all, doesn't
> emphasizes the List data structure to the exclusion of hash
> tables, vectors with fill pointers, etc., and doesn't mention
> anything AI'ish? They'd go (yes, they actually went and
> looked) looking for Lisp books in a book store and not find any
> amid bookcases full of 33 thousand mostly horrid C++ and Java
> books. It does give one a certain impression of the language.
try Object Oriented programming Common Lisp and/or Ansi Common Lisp
>
> 8.) The lack of courses. One of the first questions my boss asked
> was where it was taught. The typical places a professional
> programmer might look to take a course (Community Colleges,
> local state schools, etc.) don't even mention the language.
Well some said they were forced to look at Lisp too. Some walk along
ans smiled about our posters (which was in fact a good thing, because
you could easily start tlaking with them) I had a lot of papers with
me for a course I would like to do in December. I'll have to wait and
see if people will participate.
9) The found it very impressive that we could change a running program
without problems and they hardly believe that you could add slots to
objects during runtime.
10) The did not have any idea that how easy a language could be
extended. They hardly believe that one can even introduce new control
flow elements just as easily as new Datastructures. And they were very
suprised to see how other "languages" could be embedded into Common
Lisp. The cl-http Server was really an eye opener for many of them,
and it was a pleasure to see how positivly they reacted.
This give me some hope on a broader usage of Common Lisp BTW. XP will
probably help too, but the point that you can change code during
runtime will probably help much more as will the easy way just to try
out an idea.
>
> There are also some "new" misconceptions that I've noticed as a
> (graduating this semester) CS undergrad at Berkeley. A lot of the
> students here, both grads and undergrads, have an impression of Lisp
> heavily tainted by Scheme, which is the only exposure most get. They
> can't even conceive of a fast compiled Lisp with iterative constructs
> and a huge library of useful functions.
Well even if they are Scheme influenced, I guess they will use MIT
Scheme to a large extend and the libraries from MIT Scheme are
extremly large and profound too.
>
> > 2) The expressed desire to have a more expressive GUI (someone mentioned
> > SWING). Better FLI support. Here again it seems to be a plea for Lisp to
> > become more mainstream (integrated) and that here should be less
> grunt work
This was an easy win for us on that fair. I just took a header and the
Lisp Version I was using simply wrote the Lisp wrappers.
>
> These criticisms I have a really hard time disagreeing with. :/ I
> really would like to see stuff like multiprocessing, GUI (although
> CLIM seems to the de facto standard for the last two), FFI, defsystem,
> possibly POSIX interfaces, SQL interfaces, etc. standardized. I don't
> necessarily mean "included in the standard for ANSI Common Lisp."
Well they asked most of the time for the GUI side, and SQL but no one
asked fo a POSIX interface or a common defsystem.
>
> I just think that many different vendors providing a variety of
> different interfaces to the same functionality is exactly the kind of
> thing that standardization was invented for. Yes, it's possible to
> write wrappers like CLOCC graciously provides. But having to use
> wrappers to write portable code seems like a cry for
> standardization.
again that was not a problem the visitos found. They were moire basic.
the were suprised
- that Lisp is still around
- that people were using it
- and what people were doing with it
>
> Incidently, CAPI and CLIM were both viewed *very* positively by the
> people I showed them to this summer. Having a GUI that's source code
> compatible between Windows and Unix was *huge* to them. Common Lisp's
> portability is one of its many great strengths.
Well it was important that it was there. I just could tell them well
the whole IDE uses CAPI that was enough for them.
>
> ObDisclaimer: I truly love Common Lisp. I'm not trying to bash it.
I can't see where you were bashing Common Lisp.
> Let me be the first to acknowledge I don't know nearly as much about
> it or its circumstances as many of the people here....
Well that's true for me too. I'm using Common Lisp nearly exclusivly
now but it's a long way to go and quite a bunch to learn. I'm happy I
started my journey some time ago. And I'm glad Common Lisp is there.
Regards
Friedrich
Fredrik Staxeng
has done anything to follow up the interest generated by this?
I guess what I am looking for i something like "here is how you install what
you need on your Debian/Red Hat/Windows system and a few well-chosen
examples that let you try out the environment". Ideally it should be specific
and complete enough to work without reference to other information sources.
--
Fredrik Stax\"ang | rot13: sf...@hcqngr.hh.fr
Thomas F. Burdick
> "Wade Humeniuk" <hume...@cadvision.com> writes:
>
> I'm going to give a lot my opinions. They're largely based on
> introducing Lisp to a couple of professional programmers in a company
> I interned for last summer (I fear I'm gonna be looking back on it as
> my only period has a professional Common Lisp programmer... :(). I'm
> obviously writing with far less experience and background then most of
> the regulars on this newsgroup, so please bear with me....
>
> > Then people diss Lisp for all sorts of small details like, too many parans,
> > can't embed comments (????), slow execution (though lots of people use
> > Python, etc.). Can people be SCARED of Lisp?? Looking back to when I
>
> I agree that people are scared of Lisp. This past summer I convinced
> by boss to let me use Common Lisp. I prototyped an application that
> they were trying to get off the ground; my prototype ran an order of
> magnitude faster on hardware that was an order of magnitude cheaper
> (the increase didn't have as much to do with the language as with
> using less naive algorithms).
Heh. I once had a boss-free month (well, sort of -- a layer of
management was missing so we were more or less on our own). "You
wrote what? Cool, wow, we'll use that right away. ... You wrote it
in WHAT?!?!" It took nearly a month to rewrite a 4-day CL project in
C++. *sigh* I never did get the C++ version running as fast, either.
So what I'm saying is, I'm jealous :).
> I then got the opportunity to demonstrate Common Lisp to the group,
> both in a presentation and one-on-one with a couple of the
> programmers. Here are a few of the things I noticed they had a hard
> time with:
>
> 1.) The syntax. This is trivial to someone whose been exposed to a lot
> of languages, but to some people, especially those who've only been
> exposed to languages in one family (Pascal, for example), the syntax
> becomes inextricably linked to the semantics of the language. It
> seemed very bizarre to them.
This is definately something I've noticed as well, and it points out a
serious hole in the education of American CS/EECS undergrads: how can
there be so many of them who literally have *never*, not even lightly,
used a non-Alogol-like language??? These people have CS degrees, for
godsakes, and have never even seen something that looks like Lisp, or
Forth, or PostScript, or SmallTalk, or ...
> 2.) The development cycle. I think for a lot of people programming
> gets reduced to "write, try to compile, fix syntax errors,
> compile (optional with some languages), run, coredump (or watch
> errors accumulate), repeat". Even languages that could be
> developed in interactively (Python, for example) are often
> used with the above idiom. The dynamic nature of the language
> can be very hard to grasp.
>
> 3.) The reliance on the editor. With Lisp, learning the development
> environment right off the bat is more critical then with other
> languages. Notepad or vi just doesn't cut it.
These are both things where Emacs is a lifesaver. Sort of like how if
someone has even lightly used PostScript, they'll have a lot easier of
a time with Lisp syntax. Emacs users I've tried to introduce to Lisp
are fine with these pieces (or can cope, anyhow). Interestingly, VB
people seem to be fine with it too. I've never used it, but I'm
guessing it's a very (development) tool-oriented language?
[...]
> 7.) The lack of books. Yes, there are some really great books on
> Common Lisp. PAIP is superb. I've heard good things about
> Graham's Lisp book. However, in general the people that tried
> them had a hard time with them. Is there a book *in print* about
> Common Lisp that doesn't emphasize recursion at all, doesn't
> emphasizes the List data structure to the exclusion of hash
> tables, vectors with fill pointers, etc., and doesn't mention
> anything AI'ish? They'd go (yes, they actually went and
> looked) looking for Lisp books in a book store and not find any
> amid bookcases full of 33 thousand mostly horrid C++ and Java
> books. It does give one a certain impression of the language.
Oh, no kidding. "Object Oriented Common Lisp" (I think that's the one
I'm thinking of) has done a good job of convincing the hardcore
OO-heads I've pointed towards it, of how cool Lisp is. AI people tend
to be open-minded enough (in my experience) that you can convince them
that their previous problem with Lisp was because they were writing
C-in-Lisp (I know quite a few people whose professors never commented
on their Lisp style, or bothered to help them -- and looking at their
code, I'm amazed they were as productive as they were. It's so much
easier to write C in C, than to try to force Lisp to be C. How did
their profs not mention this???).
Cons cells are cool, and you can hack up all kinds of useful ad-hoc
data structures with them. But they're not the most exciting part of
the language. I mean, there's so much to pick from, and when I see a
Lisp book's contents, I tend to cringe at the way all the other data
types are put off to the end of the book, and are so under-treated.
Smae thing with recursion -- it's cool and all, but so is dynamic
scoping. Imagine a Lisp book that didn't mention that not all
variables had to be declared special, until the second half of the
book. I'm trying to reccomend a book to someone who doesn't know how
to program, who wants to learn, and to someone who only knows C, C++,
and Java, and wants to learn something different. DO, DOLIST, LOOP,
etc, would be really good things for these people to learn, lest they
only write weird, unnecessary recursive code and think that's Lisp's
fault.
Kent, you said you're writing a book/books? PLEASE have the code in
the books look like actual Lisp code that people use. Please please
please.
[...]
> There are also some "new" misconceptions that I've noticed as a
> (graduating this semester) CS undergrad at Berkeley. A lot of the
> students here, both grads and undergrads, have an impression of Lisp
> heavily tainted by Scheme, which is the only exposure most get. They
> can't even conceive of a fast compiled Lisp with iterative constructs
> and a huge library of useful functions.
Yeah, the first thing I show to people after saying "Scheme is not
Common Lisp" is LOOP. Then, you know, you can go into some of the
cool features and explain how big the language is. But LOOP is about
the most un-Schemely thing I can think of, and it seems to get the
message across that these two are *very* different. Oh yeah, that and
some nice type-declared code and the CMUCL disassembly :-)
> ObDisclaimer: I truly love Common Lisp. I'm not trying to bash it.
> Let me be the first to acknowledge I don't know nearly as much about
> it or its circumstances as many of the people here....
Didn't sound at all like bashing, more like loving criticism of the
state of afairs.
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
Dr. Edmund Weitz
> So far from reading the responses to your interview I have gleaned a
> couple of points.
Let me add my two cents:
1. It looks to me as if the exposure to Lisp or Scheme in high school
or university courses contributes to the bad reputation that Lisp
has. It reminds me of my experiences with mathematics: In high
school it was rather easy for me, but I also found it quite boring
and not very interesting, so I decided to study something
else. It was pure luck that I came across a couple of books that
taught me how fascinating mathematics can be and caused me to
cancel my current studies and pick up mathematics. I studied logic
and set theory for about ten years (until I finished my Ph.D.) and
I really _loved_ it - I never regretted my decision.
If I'm talking about mathematics to someone I don't know the usual
reaction is: "Mathematics? No, please!! I've always hated it!!" If
the person is open-minded enough and if I have some time, I will
usually succed in explaining to them how interesting and cool
mathematics can be, but I can nevertheless understand their first
reaction: The mathematics curriculum in high school is mainly
geared towards using mathematics as a tool for other stuff, people
are drilled in small realms like applied analysis, and most of what
mathematics is all about is completely left out. Nobody is really
interested in showing the beauty and greatness of it - I have yet
to find a teacher who is willing _and_ able to do this. (It is my
personal experience from educating students of mathematics for four
years that the ones who decide to become teachers usually aren't
the ones who are really good and love what they're doing.)
Coming back to Lisp: I had to attend a couple of CS courses in my
first two years at the university and I was exposed to Lisp - which
was the main language taught there. (They've recently switched to
Scheme.) I mostly didn't care about computers and programming
languages for the rest of my studies and I can't say that the Lisp
courses left any impression on me. I can only remember that it was
rather boring - which I also attribute to the teacher and the stuff
that was actually taught.
Now, after having been a professional programmer for about five
years (doing the usual stuff - C, C++, Java, Perl), I have
rediscovered Lisp about half a year ago and I'm really in love. I'm
very glad I found it, and I spend much of my spare time reading
about it, trying to learn more about it and writing programs in
it. It is like meeting a girl that you've known since kindergarten
but who was away for a couple of years and finally realizing how
beautiful she is and _also_ realizing that she always was a beauty
but you somehow didn't get it earlier...
My conclusion is that in both cases - mathematics and Lisp - the
educational system has been quite counterproductive. Only through
the writings of people who really cared about their subject was I
able to grasp the beauty of something that I would have missed
otherwise. I don't know what we can do to change the current
situation, but maybe - as long as we're not able to turn the
educational system upside down - we shouldn't be to frustrated if
high schools and universities teach Java or C instead of Lisp. This
might help us in the long run... :)
(Disclaimer: These are my experiences based on the situation in
Germany. But I suspect that it'll be about the same in other
countries.)
2. I'd like to thank Kent Pitman for this great interview but after
reading the comments I'm not sure if it'll change anything. If you
watch the number of comments for this interview and for other
articles that appear on Slashdot for some time, you'll realize that
none of the topics there is able to capture the audience's
attention for more than a couple of hours. It'll take less than a
day and your article's headline has vanished from the main page
which is more or less equivalent to not being there at all. Combine
this with the comments themselves (of which 90% are moronic) and
the fact that there's virtually no discussion thread which has a
depth of three or higher and you'll come to the conclusion that
Slashdot is just another incarnation of the MTV culture: There has
to be a new video (er, article) at least every hour, and most of
the stuff that they're 'playing' consists of the same old 'pop
songs' (my editor/OS is better than yours, Microsoft is bad, AMD
has released a new chip) over and over again.
Well, maybe I'm too pessimistic, and KMP was able to attract two or
three people who will actually try to learn more about Lisp and who
will realize how great it is - maybe that's all we can ask for.
Sorry for the long posting,
Edi.
Kent M Pitman
> This is definately something I've noticed as well, and it points out a
> serious hole in the education of American CS/EECS undergrads: how can
> there be so many of them who literally have *never*, not even lightly,
> used a non-Alogol-like language??? These people have CS degrees, for
> godsakes, and have never even seen something that looks like Lisp, or
> Forth, or PostScript, or SmallTalk, or ...
Does anyone else who, like me, talks of "Algol-like languages" wonder
if any of those in CS these days ever get to see the spec for, much
less a running implementation of, Algol? Not that I suppose it
matters if the answer is no, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
It's just funny that the term appears so often yet in many, perhaps
most, cases probably hasn't been taught in schools for ages.
I remember being shocked some years back when I noticed the movie industry
had switched to a near-uniform policy of every time they mention an
actor/actress marking it with a hint afterward of who the person might be,
said hint almost universally being the last movie they were in (as opposed
to the best). What jarred me into noticing this was the reference to
Julie Andrews followed by, in case you hadn't seen her in any movies, the
notation ("S.O.B.") ... ah, yes, THAT Julie Andrews. I knew I'd seen her
in something.
Even being among it, I have to admit the American culture needs a
serious overhaul of its manner of instilling an appreciation for
history. For all I can tell, it's presently being taught more a
geometry problem where the words "Columbus" and "1492" define two ends
of a straight line. And it's just hard to see how that kind of "point
knowledge" generalizes.
> Kent, you said you're writing a book/books? PLEASE have the code in
> the books look like actual Lisp code that people use. Please please
> please.
Don't worry about that one. I have no patience for Lisp as an exercise
in recursive pain. I'm sure that's adequately covered in other texts.
(If you have other specific ideas about styles/issues/applications/techniques
that need attention, drop me a line in email.)
Kent M Pitman
> 2. I'd like to thank Kent Pitman for this great interview
Aw...
> but after reading the comments I'm not sure if it'll change anything.
The world is not changed all at once, but one step at a time.
If you read the replies, you see two things: people who didn't like Lisp
who still don't like Lisp. And people close to the margin who said outright
"hey, I haven't given Lisp a fair chance and maybe I'll look into it".
I think that's probably as good as we're going to get from one article.
But people can make more articles and do more things to bring Lisp into
view.
> Well, maybe I'm too pessimistic, and KMP was able to attract two or
> three people who will actually try to learn more about Lisp and who
> will realize how great it is - maybe that's all we can ask for.
Exactly. Two or three well-placed thoughtful people can change two or three
organizations. One or more of those organizations might become a Lisp
success story.
> Sorry for the long posting,
Uh oh. Do I have to apologize for all of mine? Let's not go there.
Dennis Decker Jensen
> Well, maybe I'm too pessimistic, and KMP was able to attract two or
> three people who will actually try to learn more about Lisp and who
> will realize how great it is - maybe that's all we can ask for.
Maybe. There are many people looking for a better language and a
better tool, and they will certainly listen.
I myself started on a journey about a year ago, when some people at
comp.lang.ruby kept refering to functional programming languages and
Lisp and the resemblence of their features in Ruby. My background is
C++, Java, Python, a little SmallTalk, Ruby, the Agile Alliance,
patterns and a "few" other things.
This resulted in me buying a copy of SICP, learning Scheme (after
serious consideration of starting with Common Lisp) and studying
OCAML, Haskell and Common Lisp on the side line. I'm now half way
through SICP -- and I'm still not even at university studying! :-)
Needless to say: It has turned my view of programming upside-down.
Common Lisp looks more and more attractive as I find out more about
it. So interviews such like the one at slashdot are among the only way
I can find out more about Common Lisp style.
That is, besides from reading this news group, reading websites from
Robert Kent Dybvig, Bruno Haible, Oleg, Paul Graham and so on. I
haven't decided on what Lisp-book to buy yet. Dave Touretzsky's book
is quite too easy for me, and CLTL2 doesn't give much in the way about
the Common Lisp Style (maybe Paul Grahams book will do it?). It's
actually a bit hard to shift from Scheme to Common Lisp, making Common
Lisp programs as elegant as I can do them in Scheme...
Sorry, I got sidetracked.
What I wanted to say, is: There are some among us out there looking
and reading and trying to find more. I would heartily welcome an up to
date textbook on Lisp with great examples of code -- especially if the
examples aren't all just AI and mathematics, but more "common"
examples, that will make Lisp look cool! :-)
All you seniors: Keep talking about and showing the wonders of Lisp! I
think we desperately need it.
Best Regards,
Dennis Decker Jensen
COGNOSCERE NON VIDERI
Matt Gregory
Ok, I saw the article and I'm taking up the reins. I want to
learn the highest-possible-level language, and from what I
understand, Lisp is the way to go. I even went out and bought
a book. Exhaustively searched the 33,000 C++, Java and MCSE
books at the bookstore, only to find the only Lisp book in
the whole place laying on the floor. "Lisp 3rd edition" by
Winston and Horn. I hope it's good.
Anyway, I want to make regular user apps with windows, dialogs,
animation, the whole bit. My question is, is there a certain
GUI library/Lisp environment that I should be looking into that
would be good for cross-platform programming, esp. for future
OS's, like when 64-bit becomes mainstream? I don't want to
write software that will become obsolete in 10 or 20 years, if
I can avoid it.
IOW, is there a library that is considered by the Lisp community
as the standard with which to program GUI apps?
Thanks
Matt Gregory
Sashank Varma
<msgr...@nospam.com> wrote:
>Anyway, I want to make regular user apps with windows, dialogs,
>animation, the whole bit. My question is, is there a certain
>GUI library/Lisp environment that I should be looking into that
>would be good for cross-platform programming, esp. for future
>OS's, like when 64-bit becomes mainstream? I don't want to
>write software that will become obsolete in 10 or 20 years, if
>I can avoid it.
>
>IOW, is there a library that is considered by the Lisp community
>as the standard with which to program GUI apps?
i know this works against your desire for full generality from
the get-go, but could you tell us what platform you will be
developing on/for?
Sashank Varma
t...@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) wrote:
>Gabe Garza <g_g...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>> 1.) The syntax. This is trivial to someone whose been exposed to a lot
>> of languages, but to some people, especially those who've only been
>> exposed to languages in one family (Pascal, for example), the syntax
>> becomes inextricably linked to the semantics of the language. It
>> seemed very bizarre to them.
>
>This is definately something I've noticed as well, and it points out a
>serious hole in the education of American CS/EECS undergrads: how can
>there be so many of them who literally have *never*, not even lightly,
>used a non-Alogol-like language??? These people have CS degrees, for
>godsakes, and have never even seen something that looks like Lisp, or
>Forth, or PostScript, or SmallTalk, or ...
algol notation:lisp notation::
newton's calculus notation:leibniz's calculus notation
i've heard it said that english mathematics lost a centry by adopting
newton's inferior notation for nationalistic reasons. one wonders how
much time the computer science world is throwing down the drain ;-)
Sashank Varma
>Ok, I saw the article and I'm taking up the reins.
PS: Welcome aboard! Check out www.alu.org (= www.lisp.org) for
more information, including online tutorials, code collections,
etc.
Eugene Wallingford
> This is definately something I've noticed as well, and it points out a
> serious hole in the education of American CS/EECS undergrads: how can
> there be so many of them who literally have *never*, not even lightly,
> used a non-Alogol-like language??? These people have CS degrees, for
> godsakes, and have never even seen something that looks like Lisp, or
> Forth, or PostScript, or SmallTalk, or ...
Many undergrad CS students are "exposed" to other kinds of languages,
but usually not in a context that requires them to master them.
The common "smorgasbord" approach to teaching the principles of
programming languages usually exposes just enough of each language
to make students think they don't like it.
>> 7.) The lack of books. Yes, there are some really great books on
>> Common Lisp. PAIP is superb. I've heard good things about
>> Graham's Lisp book. However, in general the people that tried
>> them had a hard time with them. ...
>
> Oh, no kidding. "Object Oriented Common Lisp" (I think that's the one
> I'm thinking of) has done a good job of convincing the hardcore
> OO-heads I've pointed towards it, of how cool Lisp is. AI people tend
> to be open-minded enough (in my experience) that you can convince them
> that their previous problem with Lisp was because they were writing
> C-in-Lisp (I know quite a few people whose professors never commented
> on their Lisp style, or bothered to help them -- and looking at their
> code, I'm amazed they were as productive as they were. It's so much
> easier to write C in C, than to try to force Lisp to be C. How did
> their profs not mention this???).
I would wager that many (most?) of the profs don't *know* good
Lisp style. They are products of the same schools and have
often never mastered functional programming or Lisp. Some
schools have folks who are Lisp masters, and some of those folks
do a good job teaching Lisp, but others either don't or don't
teach the course.
>> ObDisclaimer: I truly love Common Lisp. I'm not trying to bash it.
>> Let me be the first to acknowledge I don't know nearly as much about
>> it or its circumstances as many of the people here....
>
> Didn't sound at all like bashing, more like loving criticism of the
> state of afairs.
... and I don't mean to bash university professors. We are
a product of our own environments. I went to an undergrad
school at which we saw about 3 weeks of Lisp--just enough for
most students to think it was horrible. Maybe the *right*
3 weeks would be good enough, but I think that students
should write real programs for a while in a language and
style so that they can learn its feel. But even folks who
want to do this at many univesities face two obstacles: the
faculty member himself isn't a Lisp master, and he can't
convince his colleagues to teach something "weird" or "not
standard" in the precious hours available.
---- Eugene
Raymond Toy
Sashank> In article <xcvhes4...@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU>,
Sashank> t...@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) wrote:
>> Gabe Garza <g_g...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>>> 1.) The syntax. This is trivial to someone whose been exposed to a lot
>>> of languages, but to some people, especially those who've only been
>>> exposed to languages in one family (Pascal, for example), the syntax
>>> becomes inextricably linked to the semantics of the language. It
>>> seemed very bizarre to them.
>>
>> This is definately something I've noticed as well, and it points out a
>> serious hole in the education of American CS/EECS undergrads: how can
>> there be so many of them who literally have *never*, not even lightly,
>> used a non-Alogol-like language??? These people have CS degrees, for
>> godsakes, and have never even seen something that looks like Lisp, or
>> Forth, or PostScript, or SmallTalk, or ...
Sashank> algol notation:lisp notation::
Sashank> newton's calculus notation:leibniz's calculus notation
Do you have a pointer to what the notation looked like? Just curious.
Ray
T. Kurt Bond
> Does anyone else who, like me, talks of "Algol-like languages" wonder
> if any of those in CS these days ever get to see the spec for, much
> less a running implementation of, Algol? Not that I suppose it
> matters if the answer is no, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
> It's just funny that the term appears so often yet in many, perhaps
> most, cases probably hasn't been taught in schools for ages.
A Google search reveals that apparently the Algol-60 revised report
is on the web.
http://www.masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm
--
T. Kurt Bond, t...@tkb.mpl.com
Matt Gregory
news:sashank.varma-0...@129.59.212.53:
Well, I normally use Windows 2000, but I am currently installing a
fresh copy of Linux as a dual boot and I would like to switch over
to that for development, but be able to run programs on Windows as
well. I also have a machine that runs Windows 98 because it's the
only OS that supports my MIDI patchbay, and I would like to write
some software for that, too. I should probably get a new patchbay
but they are expensive, plus all my audio software is for Windows.
I am a complete hobbyist programmer; like a jack of all trades,
master of none. I want to master something, and hope Lisp will
be worth mastering, because nothing else seems worth it. I have
been struggling with Visual Studio for a few years and it's just
way too much work to use for my casual purposes. Visual Basic
is ok, I guess, but it makes me ill. MFC is way too complicated
and legacy-design-burdened to be much help. C++ as a language
is way too complicated for my needs. C is my favorite language,
but it's just too much work to debug. All of my C programs have
tons of bugs.
Anyway, I'm excited about Lisp. It is fascinating how it maps
computer language so cleanly with the English language. Even
if it doesn't fulfill my every requirement, I will probably
learn it anyway.
Matt
Kenny Tilton
Matt Gregory wrote:
> "Lisp 3rd edition" by
> Winston and Horn. I hope it's good.
IIRC that book is pre-common lisp. But it will get you going. Amazon has
a lot of books on Lisp, I think. And if high-level is your goal,
Graham's "On Lisp" is all about that.
>
> IOW, is there a library that is considered by the Lisp community
> as the standard with which to program GUI apps?
CLIM is headed that way, but I took a quick look, didn't like it.
Here is a link to a kazillion Lisp GUI projects:
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/Graphics%20Toolkit
To the extent that X is becoming a cross-platform standard, one of the
CLX projects might be the way to go.
You can defer that choice and just go with the GUI framework offered by
whichever Lisp you settle on. I know MCL and ACL come with their own
frameworks, LispWorks as well perty sure.
kenny
clinisys
Dorai Sitaram
Rajappa Iyer <r...@panix.com> wrote:
>Raymond Toy <t...@rtp.ericsson.se> writes:
>
>> Sashank> algol notation:lisp notation::
>> Sashank> newton's calculus notation:leibniz's calculus notation
>>
>> Do you have a pointer to what the notation looked like? Just curious.
>
>
>IIRC, where Leibniz had a generalized notation for differentials of
>the nth order.
>
> n
>d y
>-----
> n
>dx
>
>Whereas Newton explicitly enumerated the successive differentiations:
>
>d (d (d (d y)))
>---------------
>d (d (d (d x)))
>
>(Hm...)
>
>or something like that.
The denominator doesn't look like something that could
have come from Newton, since it notates the change of
the change of ... x, and Newton surely knew better.
Our received notation for derivatives, whether it
should properly be laid at the feet of Newton or
Leibniz, is unfunctional (of all the places to so
be!) and ambiguous anyway. See Abelson and Wisdom's
_Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics_,
preface, footnote 2
(http://mitpress2.mit.edu/sicm/book-Z-H-5.html).
--d
Dorai Sitaram
>Our received notation for derivatives, whether it
>should properly be laid at the feet of Newton or
>Leibniz, is unfunctional (of all the places to so
>be!) and ambiguous anyway. See Abelson and Wisdom's
>_Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics_,
>preface, footnote 2
>(http://mitpress2.mit.edu/sicm/book-Z-H-5.html).
Oops. s/Abelson/Sussman/.
--d
Andrew
> It reminds me of my experiences with mathematics: In high
> school it was rather easy for me, but I also found it quite boring
> and not very interesting, so I decided to study something
> else. It was pure luck that I came across a couple of books that
> taught me how fascinating mathematics can be and caused me to
> cancel my current studies and pick up mathematics. I studied logic
> and set theory for about ten years (until I finished my Ph.D.) and
> I really _loved_ it - I never regretted my decision.
What what books were these? They sound like something I might
want to read myself.
--Andrew
Marco Antoniotti
ds...@goldshoe.gte.com (Dorai Sitaram) writes:
Nope. You got it right the first time.
I did not know about the book. Looks interesting. Like the previous
one on Turtle geometry by Abelson.
Dr. Edmund Weitz
OK, this is off the top of my head and only backed up by a quick peek
through my bookshelves, so I'm not sure if I missed one or if this is
entirely correct, but here we go:
1. It all started with "Moderne Mathematik" by Walter Fuchs. This was
part of a series called "Exakte Geheimnisse" by Droemer/Knaur (the
publisher) which also included some good books about other themes
like physics or chemistry. I'm not sure if this is available in
English.
2. Courant/Robbins; What is Mathematics
3. Gårding: Encounter with Mathematics
4. 'Gödel's Proof' by Nagel and Newman led me to logic and set
theory.
5. I was also pretty amazed by Hofstadter's 'Gödel-Escher-Bach' at
that time.
I'm pretty sure there must be more or even better books but I'm not
familiar with the current literature. Maybe other readers of this
newsgroup want to help?
If you're like me and you come to the conclusion that infinite set
theory and cardinal arithmetic is the real deal you might even want to
read a book that I have co-written. It's at
<http://www.birkhauser.ch/books/math/6124.htm>
I wouldn't recommend to start with this one, though... :)
I hope you'll be one of the chosen few who have fun with mathematics.
Good luck,
Edi.
Pierre R. Mai
> Matt Gregory wrote:
> > "Lisp 3rd edition" by
> > Winston and Horn. I hope it's good.
>
> IIRC that book is pre-common lisp. But it will get you going. Amazon has
> a lot of books on Lisp, I think. And if high-level is your goal,
> Graham's "On Lisp" is all about that.
The Winston and Horn book has been around for a long time (1981
actually), and the original edition didn't use Common Lisp, because it
didn't exist at the time (it was just in the process of creation,
starting from 1980 and culminating in the publication of CLtL (now
called CLtL1 to distinguish it from CLtL2, which never was a
standard), the first standard for Common Lisp. The 3rd edition
(published 1989 and reprinted with corrections 1997) very definitely
uses Common Lisp, and maybe the 2nd edition (1984) did so, too.
Of course the Common Lisp isn't yet complete ANSI CL (since the ANSI
standard was only cast in stone in 1994), but it includes some amount
of post-CLtL1 stuff, like CLOS, although it doesn't yet cover the
Common Lisp Condition System or Extended LOOP.
I personally think the book is quite good, providing a cross between
something like ANSI Common Lisp by Graham, and Paradigms of AI
Programming by Norvig, by including lots of non-trivial (not in the
"very intricate" sense mathematicians like to apply to it, but rather
in the simple "slightly more complex than trivial" sense) examples.
Regs, Pierre.
--
Pierre R. Mai <pm...@acm.org> http://www.pmsf.de/pmai/
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
We cause accidents. -- Nathaniel Borenstein
jeff
> 2. I'd like to thank Kent Pitman for this great interview but after
> reading the comments I'm not sure if it'll change anything. If you
> watch the number of comments for this interview and for other
> articles that appear on Slashdot for some time, you'll realize that
> none of the topics there is able to capture the audience's
> attention for more than a couple of hours.
I'd like to be a counterpoint to this. It was a link to a Paul Graham
article on Slashdot that got me (re)interested in Lisp. The real
problem is that 95% (99%?) of programmers don't really like programming
that much. They only want to know what they need to know to get a paycheck.
Here's my big question on the topic: Do languanges ever recapture
significant mindshare? Has any language ever made a significant
comeback? I don't think so. I hope CL can be the first.
Sashank Varma
<t...@rtp.ericsson.se> wrote:
>Do you have a pointer to what the notation looked like? Just curious.
my references didn't turn up much. newton's calculus worked via
something called 'fluxions', which seem to resemble the writing
of nth derivatives with n dots on top of a variable. sorry,
that's all i got out of them. i'll look in my copy of bell's
"men of mathematics" at home tonight.
Kenny Tilton
kenny
clinisys
Hamilton Link
> Lisp style. They are products of the same schools and have
> often never mastered functional programming or Lisp. Some
> schools have folks who are Lisp masters, and some of those folks
> do a good job teaching Lisp, but others either don't or don't
> teach the course.
I don't know about many or most, but I know at least some professors
(and many coworkers) that don't know lisp is an object oriented
language, because the last time they used lisp was 10 years ago.
Moreover, they still think Common Lisp is just a bigger dialect of lisp
-- rather than basically the only lisp anyone uses these days, and a
distinct creature from scheme.
These professors are whizzes at ML, Prolog, etc., but Lisp has evolved
to become useful and they somehow didn't ever see "Object Oriented
Common Lisp" on a shelf or on amazon, and don't realize CLOS is part of
the ANSI standard etc. etc.
The point being that of course they don't know lisp style. They don't
know lisp. They don't even know ABOUT lisp. And they don't care about
learning and teaching good lisp because of the myth (yes, it's a myth)
that "There's no industry demand."
As people "in the know" we should continue to put pressure on our bosses
and our colleagues and on professors to learn _about_ lisp -- unlearning
the myths and learning the facts, even if they don't learn lisp itself.
That's what will give lisp a stronger footing when we try to advocate
it's use for this or that project.
Heck, maybe we should just forget logic and try the sell instead. We
need an advertising campaign like Java had -- Sun marketed Java from a
nothing into a something. Probably we on c.l.lisp don't have that kind
of cash, but I think a strong grass-roots effort could benefit us all...
I'm thinking of a flyer that has some sound bites on it and some pretty
colors that we could pass out to the the local CS faculty, our managers,
etc.
h
Gabe Garza
> learning and teaching good lisp because of the myth (yes, it's a myth)
> that "There's no industry demand."
How is this a myth?
Yes, there are people out there using Lisp professionally. But
relative to the number of people using Java (ick), C++ (shudder), or
even Visual Basic (spastic convulsions), I'd be willing to bet that
the demand for professional Common Lispers is utterly
insignificant. I'd be very interested in language use statistics, if
any such things exist (or are even possible to accurately gather).
A search on monster.com for "Common Lisp" yields a single job at "SRI
International" which requires a PhD with a specialization in AI. A
search for "C++ OR Java" returns 4,997 jobs. "Visual Basic AND NOT
Java AND NOT C++" returns 1467. "Cobol" returns 1040. "RGP" returns
352. Even "Algol," arguably more obscure then Common Lisp, returns 5.
If you're graduating with an undergraduate degree, and want a job
using Lisp, I don't really think your (ok, "my" ;)) hopes should be
that great! If industry demand is to be a primary criteria for
deciding if a language is taught, then Common Lisp is a very bad
language to teach.
I happen to think that industry demand is a lousy criteria, myself. :)
Gabe Garza
Thomas F. Burdick
> Does anyone else who, like me, talks of "Algol-like languages" wonder
> if any of those in CS these days ever get to see the spec for, much
> less a running implementation of, Algol? Not that I suppose it
> matters if the answer is no, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
> It's just funny that the term appears so often yet in many, perhaps
> most, cases probably hasn't been taught in schools for ages.
I'm pretty sure most don't. I sure haven't used an Algol system, but
I have seen several hundred lines of Algol code.
Thomas F. Burdick
> Common Lisp looks more and more attractive as I find out more about
> it. So interviews such like the one at slashdot are among the only way
> I can find out more about Common Lisp style.
>
> That is, besides from reading this news group, reading websites from
> Robert Kent Dybvig, Bruno Haible, Oleg, Paul Graham and so on. I
> haven't decided on what Lisp-book to buy yet. Dave Touretzsky's book
> is quite too easy for me, and CLTL2 doesn't give much in the way about
> the Common Lisp Style (maybe Paul Grahams book will do it?). It's
> actually a bit hard to shift from Scheme to Common Lisp, making Common
> Lisp programs as elegant as I can do them in Scheme...
Graham's book ("ANSI Common Lisp") is written in something of a
Schemier style than most CL code I've seen. But it's definitely a
Common Lisp book. My poor copy is getting all worn out from passing
it around to people who've come through Cal's CS 61 program where they
teach Scheme. I definately think it's a good fit for someone trying
to get to CL from Scheme, based on experience. Just don't listen to a
word he has to say about LOOP :)
Thomas F. Burdick
> Here's my big question on the topic: Do languanges ever recapture
> significant mindshare? Has any language ever made a significant
> comeback? I don't think so. I hope CL can be the first.
BASIC, I think. Did it have much mindshare at all by he end of the
80's? It sure does now (VisualBasic).
Thomas F. Burdick
> 2. I'd like to thank Kent Pitman for this great interview but after
> reading the comments I'm not sure if it'll change anything. If you
> watch the number of comments for this interview and for other
> articles that appear on Slashdot for some time, you'll realize that
> none of the topics there is able to capture the audience's
> attention for more than a couple of hours. It'll take less than a
> day and your article's headline has vanished from the main page
> which is more or less equivalent to not being there at all. Combine
> this with the comments themselves (of which 90% are moronic) and
> the fact that there's virtually no discussion thread which has a
> depth of three or higher and you'll come to the conclusion that
> Slashdot is just another incarnation of the MTV culture: There has
> to be a new video (er, article) at least every hour, and most of
> the stuff that they're 'playing' consists of the same old 'pop
> songs' (my editor/OS is better than yours, Microsoft is bad, AMD
> has released a new chip) over and over again.
I'm gonna take that MTV comment and run with it (warning). I sure
hope it's like a blip on MTV, particularly if it can be a recurring
blip. Time shift back to 1994. I'm thinking here of "Yo! MTV Raps",
which was a pretty small blip on MTV as a whole, and was the only
place they allowed hip-hop to be played (again, we're in 1994). But
when it started back in the '80s, it was the first exposure a lot of
the country had to hip-hop, and it made a point of exporting both
hip-hop music and culture from NYC. Sure, it would've made it to
Chicago and California anyway, but Yo! was vital in the spread of
hip-hop to places like Seattle, St. Louis, etc., both of which have
had healthy, flourishing hip-hop communities for 15 years, thanks in
part to Yo!. If this double-feature interview on Slashdot can be the
first blip of Yo! MTV Raps on MTV, maybe Lisp can get exported to
seedling communities. And, time shifting back to now ...
Coby Beck
"Gabe Garza" <g_g...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:vggjz9...@kynopolis.org...
> Hamilton Link <hel...@sandia.gov> writes:
>
>
> > learning and teaching good lisp because of the myth (yes, it's a myth)
> > that "There's no industry demand."
>
> How is this a myth?
>
> Yes, there are people out there using Lisp professionally. But
> relative to the number of people using Java (ick), C++ (shudder), or
> even Visual Basic (spastic convulsions), I'd be willing to bet that
> the demand for professional Common Lispers is utterly
> insignificant. I'd be very interested in language use statistics, if
> any such things exist (or are even possible to accurately gather).
>
> A search on monster.com for "Common Lisp" yields a single job at "SRI
> International" which requires a PhD with a specialization in AI. A
> search for "C++ OR Java" returns 4,997 jobs. "Visual Basic AND NOT
> Java AND NOT C++" returns 1467. "Cobol" returns 1040. "RGP" returns
> 352. Even "Algol," arguably more obscure then Common Lisp, returns 5.
>
I get 121 from flipdog.com Yes, it is less but they are out there. I have
searched for and found lisp jobs three times in as many years. It is harder,
but can be done! Any way, "no industry demand" is just false, less, yes.. but
less is more, right?
Coby
(can't resist a quote from "Frasier" : "if less is more, just think how much
more more will be!")
--
(remove #\space "coby . beck @ opentechgroup . com")
Andrew
> OK, this is off the top of my head and only backed up by a quick peek
> through my bookshelves
[list snipped]
Much obliged for the list :)
> If you're like me and you come to the conclusion that infinite set
> theory and cardinal arithmetic is the real deal you might even want to
> read a book that I have co-written. It's at
>
> <http://www.birkhauser.ch/books/math/6124.htm>
>
> I wouldn't recommend to start with this one, though... :)
..I think I'll give it a few years.
> I hope you'll be one of the chosen few who have fun with mathematics.
Well I've recently discovered the joy of computer *science* - it may
very well lead me back to math too. Who knows. :)
--Andrew
Software Scavenger
> If you're graduating with an undergraduate degree, and want a job
> using Lisp, I don't really think your (ok, "my" ;)) hopes should be
> that great! If industry demand is to be a primary criteria for
> deciding if a language is taught, then Common Lisp is a very bad
> language to teach.
An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
language you used.
I think there is a widespread perception that Lisp is hard to learn,
and therefore hard to find programmers for. But if they only want one
programmer, and don't care what programming language is used, they
won't be so concerned about such things.
I think there are thousands of jobs where Lisp could be used, but
those jobs might be hard to find, because you wouldn't know what
keywords to enter in the search. Maybe focus on your non-programming
skills, to find a job using both those skills and programming.
Another alternative would be to get a non-Lisp programming job and
gradually subvert it into a Lisp job. E.g. write programs in Java as
directed, but write programs in Lisp to test the Java programs. Write
more programs in Lisp to find bugs in Java programs and to analyze
Java programming style. Or to generate documentation with diagrams,
etc., of Java programs. Keep doing such subversion for several years,
and you will gradually become known as the company Lisp expert, and
some of your Lisp programs might trigger new projects to build better
versions for more general purposes, with you being the manager of the
project, and the person who chooses the programming language.
Another alternative would be to do something like what Paul Graham
did. Maybe start in your spare time, but eventually build it into
something really great, which a big company would pay millions for, or
which you could use as the foundation of your own company which might
eventually grow very big.
Lisp programmers have to think out of the box. The box is the idea
that you need a "Lisp Job" or that there is not enough demand for
"Lisp Programmers". It's a big world out there and the demand for
what you can accomplish is overwhelming. You just have to find a way
to connect with that demand, and to make people understand that you
are the person they need.
Paolo Amoroso
Scavenger) wrote:
> An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
> the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
> language you used.
It looks like there is some sort of feeling that you have a Lisp job only
when you work for a Fortune 500-like megacorporation. Might this be a
consequence of the Yahoo! Store success?
If those who are looking for a Lisp job are willing to settle for something
less, I suggest that they check with their relatives and close friends.
Some of them may be in need of some software system, and may not care at
all about the language used to develop it: the trust relationship may be
stronger than--real or perceived--technical issues.
Some time ago I wrote for a friend an application for Palm OS PDAs. I used
LispMe[*], and I even got "paid" (a couple of pizzas :) for it. I'm
probably going to write some more software for him in Common Lisp, this
time for real money and not for food.
Paolo
[*] Okay, it's Scheme and not Lisp. But it's equally fun on such a tiny
device.
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://web.mclink.it/amoroso/ency/README
[http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/]
Aaron J Reichow
> An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
> the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
> language you used.
That's what I do. I am a univeristy student and doing ecological
research. (majors are CS and Biology) My research is mostly analysis,
basically coding to find some answers in our data. The people I work with
are all ecologists and biologists. As such, they don't really care what I
use, as long as it produces results and in a reasonable time frame. (I
use Squeak, not Lisp, but am planning on starting to use MCL when the OS X
version comes out)
Regards,
Aaron
Aaron Reichow :: UMD ACM Pres :: http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/
"truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." :: r. w. emerson
Erik Naggum
| Another alternative would be to get a non-Lisp programming job and
| gradually subvert it into a Lisp job. E.g. write programs in Java as
| directed, but write programs in Lisp to test the Java programs. Write
| more programs in Lisp to find bugs in Java programs and to analyze Java
| programming style. Or to generate documentation with diagrams, etc., of
| Java programs. Keep doing such subversion for several years, and you
| will gradually become known as the company Lisp expert, and some of your
| Lisp programs might trigger new projects to build better versions for
| more general purposes, with you being the manager of the project, and the
| person who chooses the programming language.
This is a very good idea. It does, however, require that those who would
do this are more "mature" than those irresponsible, short-sighted people
who regard every position they hold as a spring board to the next job,
which I personally cannot fathom why anyone would want to hire in the
first place, and it requires people who are interested in _investing_ in
their own future and that of the company they work for, not just get a
bunch of money and neither learn nor leave anything of value when they
find a new job. I think the selfish, short-sighted nature of most of
today's "young IT professionals" has caused problems that it will take
many years to repair. Fortunately, fringe/elite languages like Common
Lisp can help repair it more and better than the "langage du jour" can.
This is probably the only one of the many problems resulting from rampant
idiocy in the "IT" business that I would _not_ blame on management. In
my view, you would have to be no better than a prostitute if you accepted
a job _only_ for the money and already had in mind getting a new job
before you started working there. The kind of assembly-line workers that
_can_ switch jobs this easily fit into positions that are of no value to
anyone but from the scarcity of people who can fill them combined with
the perceived, but _not_ real, need to fill these positions, but these
are created by the people who _fill_ these jobs, not by management. What
kind of manager would _want_ to deal with the hassle of hiring people so
frequently, with the foreknowledge that he only need to fill a job that
performs a specific task that exists only because of the _incompetence_
of previous hires who had quit? In my view, a manager worth his salt
would have nightmares thinking about all the one-trick ponies he had to
hire to get a more complex job done at all. Therefore, I do not think a
manager would do anything to continue this trend as soon as he saw where
it was going, nor start it if he looked at how he would have to pay ever
more for less value if he only lured people with money.
Today's unskilled or one-skilled younger generation of computer geeks
will face the wall of uselessness much faster and much sooner than most
of them would ever expect. The sets of skills that are needed to make
some version of some particular program that is overly complicated (yet
"user friendly" in the wrong ways) because it was written and designed by
stupid people in a surreal hurry, will go out of vogue faster than they
can learn the next similar program or upgrade themselves to use the next
version better than the competition getting into the market from being
bored in high school, where they sacrifice learning real skills to short-
term money-making adventures. I may be becoming a grumpy old man, but it
appears that if you want to get serious computer-related work done these
days, do not hire people below the age of 25, _whatever_ they claim to
know -- whatever it is, it is probably the _only_ thing they know, and
they have no additional knowledge to evaluate its appropriateness of use.
Do not hire people who know Java -- hire people who know Java, _too_.
| Lisp programmers have to think out of the box.
Conversely, if you need someone who is used to think outside the box,
hire a (Common) Lisp programmer, and expect to get uncommon flexibility
in their thinking skills, a wide variety of backgrounds, serious
interests in many aspects of the development process, etc.
///
--
Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's
Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate.
--
Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.
Hannah Schroeter
In article <87k7x01...@frown.here>,
Friedrich Dominicus <fr...@q-software-solutions.com> wrote:
>[...]
>9) The found it very impressive that we could change a running program
>without problems and they hardly believe that you could add slots to
>objects during runtime.
Yeah, that's impressive. However, I hear the name "Erlang" called.
IMHO there's much more infrastructure for *structured* hot code
swap in Erlang than in Lisp.
>[...]
>> Let me be the first to acknowledge I don't know nearly as much about
>> it or its circumstances as many of the people here....
>Well that's true for me too. I'm using Common Lisp nearly exclusivly
>now but it's a long way to go and quite a bunch to learn. I'm happy I
>started my journey some time ago. And I'm glad Common Lisp is there.
At work too? Just tell: Where can one do Lisp at work? :-)
>Regards
>Friedrich
Kind regards,
Hannah.
Gabe Garza
> Yeah, that's impressive. However, I hear the name "Erlang" called.
> IMHO there's much more infrastructure for *structured* hot code
> swap in Erlang than in Lisp.
If you have the time, could you explain the differences between
updating a running Erlang program and updating a Lisp system? I'd
be very interested...
> At work too? Just tell: Where can one do Lisp at work? :-)
See the current thread "Lisp Jobs," in which a half dozen or so
very helpful people have given excellent advice on how one goes about
doing Lisp at work. As long as you're over 25. ;)
Gabe Garza
Tim Bradshaw
> my references didn't turn up much. newton's calculus worked via
> something called 'fluxions', which seem to resemble the writing
> of nth derivatives with n dots on top of a variable. sorry,
> that's all i got out of them. i'll look in my copy of bell's
> "men of mathematics" at home tonight.
Newton had some whole elaborate mechanism of `infinitessimals' which
were numbers smaller than any actual number but not zero. I don't
think he had the idea of limits &c which is important in Leibnitz's
approach. So I think the difference was more than notational.
--tim
Scott McKay
"Tim Bradshaw" <t...@cley.com> wrote in message
news:ey3zo5u...@cley.com...
This is way off topic, but WTH...
There's a newish book called "Where Mathematics Comes From", by
Lakoff and Nunez, which I highly recommend. It describes the "tower
of metaphors" that lead to the equation (= (+ (^ $e (* $pi $i)) 1) 0),
which requires a pretty lengthy discussion of infinity and infinitesimals.
The story of these concepts is, honestly, really fascinating.
Hartmann Schaffer
t...@tornado.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> writes:
>
>> Does anyone else who, like me, talks of "Algol-like languages" wonder
>> if any of those in CS these days ever get to see the spec for, much
>> less a running implementation of, Algol? Not that I suppose it
>> matters if the answer is no, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
>> It's just funny that the term appears so often yet in many, perhaps
>> most, cases probably hasn't been taught in schools for ages.
>
> I'm pretty sure most don't. I sure haven't used an Algol system, but
> I have seen several hundred lines of Algol code.
which algol? 58 (jovial, neliac, mad), 60, or 68?
hs
--
Apart from the obvious disagreement about who the good guys are, what
is the difference between "You are either with us or against us" and
"There are only good muslim and infidels"?
Tim Moore
Scavenger" <cubic...@mailandnews.com> wrote:
> Gabe Garza <g_g...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
> news:<vggjz9...@kynopolis.org>...
>> If you're graduating with an undergraduate degree, and want a job
>> using Lisp, I don't really think your (ok, "my" ;)) hopes should be
>> that great! If industry demand is to be a primary criteria for
>> deciding if a language is taught, then Common Lisp is a very bad
>> language to teach.
> I think there is a widespread perception that Lisp is hard to learn, and
> therefore hard to find programmers for. But if they only want one
> programmer, and don't care what programming language is used, they won't
> be so concerned about such things. I think there are thousands of jobs
> where Lisp could be used, but those jobs might be hard to find, because
> you wouldn't know what keywords to enter in the search. Maybe focus on
> your non-programming skills, to find a job using both those skills and
> programming.
That's an important point: there's probably not much of a market for pure
Lisp programmers in the same way there appears to be a market for pure
Java and Perl programmers, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a
healthy market for Lisp jobs. For an analogy, look to another language
that is as old as Lisp: Fortran. I bet that for the last 30 years there
have been a vanishingly tiny number of "Fortran jobs", but many thousands
of scientists and engineers still do serious Fortran programming daily.
In the same way, there don't seem to be too many pure Lisp opportunities
around unless you're a Lisp superstar, but there are a fair number of
opportunities (see Franz' webpage) if you have some expertise in AI,
scheduling, compilers, eCommerce, etc.
So yeah, your non-programming language skills are as least as important
as your Lisp skills for getting a job in which you can use Lisp.
I should also note that the range of advertised Lisp jobs look *way* more
interesting than the range of typical IT jobs, assuming you have the
skills to do them. IMHO.
Tim
Erik Naggum
| There's a newish book called "Where Mathematics Comes From", by
| Lakoff and Nunez, which I highly recommend. It describes the "tower
| of metaphors" that lead to the equation (= (+ (^ $e (* $pi $i)) 1) 0),
| which requires a pretty lengthy discussion of infinity and infinitesimals.
| The story of these concepts is, honestly, really fascinating.
Is that (zerop (1+ (exp (complex 0 pi)))) in Common Lisp? :)
had...@worldnet.att.net
>
> An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
> the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
> language you used.
Exactly what I do. My bosses pay me to write software that helps them
make money, and that's pretty much all they care about. So I get to use
whatever I want, and much of the time that's Lisp.
Howard
--
Howard Ding
had...@worldnet.att.net
http://math.sunysb.edu/~hading http://thunder.prohosting.com/~hading
Alain Picard
>
> An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
> the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
> language you used.
>
Yes. And yet another alternative is to hone your skills, and
become responsible for a development team. You must do this
in a company where management trusts you to make technical
decisions, and you trust management to make correct business
decisions. Then evaluate your needs, and perhaps you will find
that lisp fits them. Then you tell management that you will
be using Lisp.
Note, for this to work: management has to TRUST you. They
have to know you have a stake, they have to know you'll be
there some years from now.
That's been my story. We evaluated technologies, and basically
came down to lisp or python. Somewhat surprisingly (to me), it
was easier to recruite lisp programmers than python programmers.
You will NOT be able to do this in an environment where people are
scared of taking risks, or treat their employees poorly (i.e. as
if they were interchangeable). In a previous job, I failed to
change a single programming practice after over 3 years of delivering
on every task. I took the hint. When the dotcom bust hit, that
company's stock went from $17 to $0.05, and that came as no surprise
to me.
Advice to a prospective young programmer: find out from your
employer how they work, and what they do that is different
from their competitors. If the answer is that they're sheep,
and only do what "everybody else" is doing (e.g. Java Bandwagon
shops) you don't want to work there.
--
It would be difficult to construe Larry Wall, in article
this as a feature. <1995May29....@netlabs.com>
Thomas F. Burdick
> In article <xcvadxv...@tornado.ocf.berkeley.edu>,
> t...@tornado.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> writes:
> >
> >> Does anyone else who, like me, talks of "Algol-like languages" wonder
> >> if any of those in CS these days ever get to see the spec for, much
> >> less a running implementation of, Algol? Not that I suppose it
> >> matters if the answer is no, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
> >> It's just funny that the term appears so often yet in many, perhaps
> >> most, cases probably hasn't been taught in schools for ages.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure most don't. I sure haven't used an Algol system, but
> > I have seen several hundred lines of Algol code.
>
> which algol? 58 (jovial, neliac, mad), 60, or 68?
68
Frank A. Adrian
> h...@heaven.nirvananet (Hartmann Schaffer) writes:
>> which algol? 58 (jovial, neliac, mad), 60, or 68?
>
> 68
>
Damn straight. Most orthogonal language ever developed. Worth learning
simply for that fact alone. The specification is amazingly succint due to
the use of meta-grammar. Note to budding computer linguists: This is
probably the best exemplar of a procedural language out there. Learn from
it. It's worth it...
faa
Kent M Pitman
> When the dotcom bust hit, that
> company's stock went from $17 to $0.05, and that came as no surprise
> to me.
Good thing you weren't using Lisp or it might have caused this. ;-)
Kent M Pitman
> h...@heaven.nirvananet (Hartmann Schaffer) writes:
>
> ...
> > which algol? 58 (jovial, neliac, mad), 60, or 68?
>
> 68
Hmm. I think I've only ever seen/used 60. My impression is that 68 was
all full of junk, like later versions of Fortran.
Daniel Lakeland
wrote:
Actually I think the differences were entirely notational. Leibniz had
the same infinitesimal idea, it wasn't until Cauchy that limits were
developed. I could be wrong though.
I think basically newton's notation was ever more "dots" or "primes"
above a derivative... whereas lebiniz had the df/dx notation.
Kevin Rosenberg
> Is that (zerop (1+ (exp (complex 0 pi)))) in Common Lisp? :)
Yep, that's it in Common Lisp.
Unfortunately, besides leaving out if* (sorry!), the ANSI standard
forgot to require infinite precision real arithmetic ;-)
Euler might be surprised that (1+ (exp (complex 0 pi))) evaluates
to #c(0.0d0 1.2246063538223773d-16) in modern times.
--
Kevin Rosenberg, M.D.
ke...@rosenberg.net
Kevin Rosenberg
> Unfortunately, besides leaving out if* (sorry!), the ANSI standard
> forgot to require infinite precision real arithmetic ;-)
Oops, I need to retract that thought. If the standard did require
infinite precision arithmetic, implementations of ANSI CL may fit the
myth of Lisp being "slow".
Kenny Tilton
Alain Picard wrote:
>
> cubic...@mailandnews.com (Software Scavenger) writes:
>
> >
> > An alternative to consider would be to find a job where you would be
> > the only programmer, and where nobody would care what programming
> > language you used.
> >
>
> Yes. And yet another alternative is to hone your skills, and
> become responsible for a development team. ... Then you tell management that you will
jeff
> jeff <jn...@houseofdistraction.com> writes:
>
>
>>Here's my big question on the topic: Do languanges ever recapture
>>significant mindshare? Has any language ever made a significant
>>comeback? I don't think so. I hope CL can be the first.
>>
>
> BASIC, I think. Did it have much mindshare at all by he end of the
> 80's? It sure does now (VisualBasic).
>
>
VisualBasic is to BASIC as Modula-2 is to Pascal. It's not really the
same language. But it does offer a good example of what CL needs to
revive. The thing that makes VB so popular is that you can make an
application almost withouth programming. That's it! I'm going to start
the VisualCommonLisp project as soon as I figure out how to get CL to
talk efficiently & easily to GTK.
Marc Battyani
"Kenny Tilton" <kti...@nyc.rr.com> wrote
I also think that trust *is* the major factor. This applies to in-house and
even more to contract programming.
The trouble for new programmers is that they don't have the years of
practice that build that trust. They have to build it by solving problems in
an efficient and clean way. (rather easy compared to the Java/C*/script
languages/etc. crowds)
When the trust is there, the second problem is : "Where will we find people
to work on your stuff is you (or your company) disappear for any reason."
Maybe it could be a good idea to have a list somewhere (alu, cliki ?) of
people/companies that are able to work on Lisp projects.
Marc
Kent M Pitman
> In article <slrn9urrnn...@boa.b9.com>, Kevin Rosenberg wrote:
> > Unfortunately, besides leaving out if* (sorry!), the ANSI standard
> > forgot to require infinite precision real arithmetic ;-)
>
> Oops, I need to retract that thought. If the standard did require
> infinite precision arithmetic, implementations of ANSI CL may fit the
> myth of Lisp being "slow".
Don't forget arbitrary-precision rationals. Once you're not in a machine
word any more, the only difference between rationals and floats is that
floats have gaps in their space and rationals don't...
Bruce Hoult
<pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
And also lazy continued-fractions. You can have a representation of the
exact result which is only ever evaluated as far as necessary to produce
the digits that are actually printed.
-- Bruce
Andrzej Lewandowski
wrote:
>
>"
>I also think that trust *is* the major factor. This applies to in-house and
>even more to contract programming.
>The trouble for new programmers is that they don't have the years of
>practice that build that trust. They have to build it by solving problems in
>an efficient and clean way. (rather easy compared to the Java/C*/script
>languages/etc. crowds)
>
Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or personal opinions of
this-or-that developer. Developers don't decide about programming languages unless this
is single person, basement-type operation. These mechanisms cause that it is very hard to
convince management to use something that is not Java, C++ or VB.
Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason (other than "because I like
it") why LISP should be used instead of one of the above mentioned languages.
A.L.
Hartmann Schaffer
wrong impression. what imo prevented it from being widely accepted
was
1. they developed a new description style which most people found very
hard to understand
2. there was nobody "marketing" it
3. the language definition pushed implementation technology, i.e. it
had a few features that at that time nobody (or at most very few
people) had an idea how to implement efficiently
Kevin Rosenberg
Right you two are. I meant to say in hyperbole "infinite precision
irrational constants and functions." The (zerop ...) test in the
Common Lisp version of Euler's formula will only be numerically true
with infinite calculations.
Kent M Pitman
> Bruce Hoult wrote:
> > Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
> >> Don't forget arbitrary-precision rationals. Once you're not in a machine
> >> word any more, the only difference between rationals and floats is that
> >> floats have gaps in their space and rationals don't..
> >
> > And also lazy continued-fractions. You can have a representation of the
> > exact result which is only ever evaluated as far as necessary to produce
> > the digits that are actually printed.
>
> Right you two are. I meant to say in hyperbole "infinite precision
> irrational constants and functions." The (zerop ...) test in the
> Common Lisp version of Euler's formula will only be numerically true
> with infinite calculations.
Isn't that what Bruce is suggesting? Lazy as in returning a "future" (a
promise for a result that's still being computed, as in the Star Trek
Classic episode "A Wolf In the Fold").
Coby Beck
"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:5d9tut8kvj1dh20sn...@4ax.com...
> convince management to use something that is not Java, C++ or VB.
>
> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason (other than
"because I like
> it") why LISP should be used instead of one of the above mentioned languages.
>
troll.
Kent M Pitman
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2001 13:34:58 +0100, "Marc Battyani" <Marc.B...@fractalconcept.com>
> wrote:
>
> >" I also think that trust *is* the major factor. This applies to
> >in-house and even more to contract programming. The trouble for
> >new programmers is that they don't have the years of practice that
> >build that trust. They have to build it by solving problems in an
> >efficient and clean way. (rather easy compared to the
> >Java/C*/script languages/etc. crowds)
>
> Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or
> personal opinions of this-or-that developer. Developers don't
> decide about programming languages unless this is single person,
> basement-type operation.
I agree with you partly. But sometimes one does trust a manager who will
be willing to make more aggressive "can do" claims than his peers. There
are some domains in which I would definitely feel more confident doing this
in Lisp, even not having seen the specific programming assignment. There
are other domains in which I would probably not. If you're just writing
little UI widgets to attach to someone else's system, I'd probably still do
it in VB or Javascript or something just to not rock the boat... BUT EVEN
THERE, I might write a Lisp program to generate that junk because it's ugly
and hard to maintain, and Lisp gives me the power to simplify things where
the underlying language, by not providing adequate macro capability or
whatever, might not.
> These mechanisms cause that it is very hard
> to convince management to use something that is not Java, C++ or VB.
I don't think one argues for Lisp. I wouldn't. I'd be as likely to
argue for modularity integrity and absolute control of what
implementational technologies I use. And I'd argue for some
modularity interface I was confident I could get Lisp to deliver for.
The problem is the same in other business management problems. What if
I see a team of ten people and, Lisp or not, I think I could do the job
with two such people, better paid, plus one huge computer, and maybe also
free coca-cola. I don't make that case to management. Instead, I might
try to put my neck on the line if it's not delivered, tell them to just
give me signing authority for the budget I need, and tell them to leave
me alone until then. I think this does involve trust.
My formative management experience was in being in JROTC in high
school (a high school version of college ROTC), where I was (after 2
years of working up the ranks), a cadet Major (and later cadet
Lieutenant Colonel) on the "batallion staff" (our batallion had about
200-250 people in it, I think), working as executive officer ... The
position was roughly analogous to that of a Chief Operating Officer in
business terms. Our "work" was what seemed to me (both then and now)
a pretty realistic year-long simulation, both in class and after
class, of being a manager. I managed other staffers and also company
commanders doing all kinds of projects. What we were taught there,
both formally in class and informally in the active practice of our
roles, and what I believe to this day, is this: "trust your
subordinates or replace them, but DON'T second-guess them". You don't
micromanage. Yes, you can question them, and give them edicts, but
ultimately they're the ones who have to do the mission and if you tie
their hands and don't let them do it the way they feel empowered to do
it, it's your fault, not theirs, when it fails. I think this attitude
they taught us built trust and responsibility in both directions (and
I'm hardly surprised the military has it down to a science given the
number of people they have to manage world-wide). I never went on to
be in the military, nor even to study it further, but I was happy for
this little moment of training. The sense of pride and teamwork that
it routinely evoked in people is not something I've really seen much of
in many companies I've worked at in my career, and I attribute a lot of
it to that failure of managers to build and reward trust and autonomy.
Most software modularity works this way, too; you check output, but
you don't interrupt a program to see if it's got good intermediate
values. A lot of business does not seem to blackbox itself enough, I
think. That's not a comment about Lisp particularly, but it seems to
impact Lisp more than some other things because it takes certain
critical decisions away from people who use and understand a
particular technology (such as Lisp), and puts those decisions into
the hands of someone who is often uninformed, prejudiced, and not
willing to trust. Of course, I'm generalizing, and there are always
exceptions. But this pattern I describe does happen with enough frequency
to be worthy of note.
> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason
> (other than "because I like it") why LISP should be used instead of
> one of the above mentioned languages.
In a non-trivial number of cases, the answer is "because everyone who
happened to prefer other languages has already said it's impossible
and the only people left standing that think it's doable are Lispers".
Sometimes for doable you can replace "doable by tomorrow" or "doable and
maintainable in realtime" or "deployable while still building parts of it".
You can also add little things like "must be up continuously even when
receiving patches" (Java is almost set up to do this but not quite; I
think some guys at MIT did some mods to make it more possible, but it's
still not really a strength). Or problems that need to automatically
synthesize code, compile that code, and then call the compiled code without
exiting.
And you can add programs that require small changes in the available
kinds of data (i.e., to the type tree) to cause small changes in the
compiled file set. That is, most languages when you change the type
tree require you to recompile all your files because the compiler
secretly makes assumptions about types that make compiled code fragile
against change and force excess compilation.
But the fact is that for any problem that someone thinks is doable in another
language, I usually just say "sure why not?" because I don't see talking
anyone out of programming in their language of choice when it's going to
work for them. The only thing I say is to be watchful of "practice effects",
which tend to cause people to want to use something familiar even when they
sense it's going to let them down or make things hard. The key thing is
to know what Lisp offers you and when you might want to switch over. You
simply cannot make the decision to learn Lisp on the day you finally need
it because (a) you won't be able to tool up that fast to be a competent
programmer in ANY language and (b) you probably won't recognize, without
some familiarity, what a good problem is for Lisp without at least some
actual play in the language.
Kevin Rosenberg
> Isn't that what Bruce is suggesting? Lazy as in returning a "future" (a
> promise for a result that's still being computed, as in the Star Trek
> Classic episode "A Wolf In the Fold").
I don't recall that episode by name, but yes, a lazy result as in
"pipes" in PAIP and "streams" in SICP. I can see how lazy
continued-fractions can be used for arbitrary precision arithmetic. So,
if one wrote their own (exp) and (return-pi) functions using continued
fractions [cf], one could get a T result for
(zerop (1+ (my-cf-exp (complex 0 (my-cf-pi-generator)))))
"after" calculating infinitely .
Thomas F. Burdick
Hmm, I'd much rather code in Fortran 90 than 77. Waitaminute ... "all
full of junk" ... don't you use Common Lisp ;-)
Kent M Pitman
> In article <sfwu1w1...@shell01.TheWorld.com>, Kent M Pitman wrote:
> > Isn't that what Bruce is suggesting? Lazy as in returning a "future" (a
> > promise for a result that's still being computed, as in the Star Trek
> > Classic episode "A Wolf In the Fold").
>
> I don't recall that episode by name,
The immortal spirit of Jack the Ripper gets into the computer, and
Spock tells the computer to "compute to the last digit, the value of
pi"... He made it a class 1 priority directive to assure that the
the computer would turn bank after bank to the problem, squeezing out
the bad guy, who is presumably not smart enough to hide in the area
that has life support and will (hopefully) be last to go.
> but yes, a lazy result as in
> "pipes" in PAIP and "streams" in SICP. I can see how lazy
> continued-fractions can be used for arbitrary precision arithmetic. So,
> if one wrote their own (exp) and (return-pi) functions using continued
> fractions [cf], one could get a T result for
> (zerop (1+ (my-cf-exp (complex 0 (my-cf-pi-generator)))))
> "after" calculating infinitely .
Exactly.
Andrzej Lewandowski
I am not a troll. I am in charge of selecting tools for AI-based components of products
being developed by my company (it does't matter what is the name). Our business area is
supply channel management and logistics. These AI based components are mostly constraint
programming and agents. We are currently using Prolog, but Prolog (despite its obvious
advantages) has obvious disadvantages. One is that it is pretty hard (well...
inconvenient) to write parts of the algorithm that have purely procedural character. Since
we are extending the product lines, one obvious question is whether it would be reasonable
and justified to use something else instead of Prolog. LISP definitely is the alternative,
but... I have posted a qeustion about constraint solver for LISP - it seems that nothing
is available. There are several for Prolog, Java anc C++. I have also posted question
about interfaces to commercial linear programming solvers. None. There are number of them
for Prolog, C++ and Java.
Therefore, again: could you give me a reason why we should use LISP?...
A.L.
Erik Naggum
| Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or personal
| opinions of this-or-that developer. Developers don't decide about
| programming languages unless this is single person, basement-type
| operation.
I can only pity you for your lack of experience, but these things happen
quite frequently. It probably does not apply in the Java, C++, VB, etc,
world, where trust in the developer is a non-issue, where the personal
value of the individual programmer seems to be irrelevant at best, and
where the ability to replace such a programmer is valued much higher than
making sure that programmer contributes to the company's bottom line.
However, this extremely sorry situation is _not_ representative of the
whole world, despite the fact that those who live under such conditions
would leave the second they learned freedom was available to them, too,
and thus nobody in that world will believe it is possible to be trusted,
to have their opinions heard, to be both designer and programmer, etc.
Of course, I am only slightly exaggerating, but those who think their
personal experiences up to some point make it unnecessary to ever open
their eyes again and thus declare everything contrary to their personal
experience invalid at best or a lie at worst, have already given up the
most important value of being conscious: The world you experience is not
what you expect it to be, if you look closely enough, and that looking at
it with open eyes all the time is the only working way to deal with it.
Gabe Garza
> but... I have posted a qeustion about constraint solver for LISP -
> it seems that nothing is available. There are several for Prolog,
> Java anc C++. I have also posted question about interfaces to
> commercial linear programming solvers. None. There are number of
> them for Prolog, C++ and Java.
Have you looked at LispWorks from Xanalys (www.xanalys.com)? Their
"Enterprise Edition" comes with an embedded prolog interpreter that can
use either a Lisp'ish or traditional prolog syntax. Might give you the
best of both worlds.
Gabe Garza
Andrzej Lewandowski
This is not what I am looking for. I would like to replace Prolog by LISP, but not bring
one more language to the organization. Moreover, I am not using just-a-Prolog. I am using
Prolog that has built-in constraint solver (CLP(fd), strictly speaking), and currently
there are 5 such Prologs on the market. This what Xanalys has doesn't belong to this
category.
A.L.
Andrzej Lewandowski
>* Andrzej Lewandowski <lewand...@attglobal.net>
>| Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or personal
>| opinions of this-or-that developer. Developers don't decide about
>| programming languages unless this is single person, basement-type
>| operation.
>
> I can only pity you for your lack of experience, but these things happen
> quite frequently.
What do you know about my experience?...
A.L.
Kent M Pitman
> We are currently using Prolog, but Prolog (despite its obvious
> advantages) has obvious disadvantages. One is that it is pretty hard
> (well... inconvenient) to write parts of the algorithm that have
> purely procedural character. Since we are extending the product
> lines, one obvious question is whether it would be reasonable and
> justified to use something else instead of Prolog. LISP definitely
> is the alternative, but... I have posted a qeustion about constraint
> solver for LISP - it seems that nothing is available.
Harlequin (now Xanalys) used to have an integrated Lisp/Prolog
environment, I think. I don't know if it still does. And I think it
has their KnowledgeWorks expert system shell, which is either the same
thing or something similar -- I know it's something that integrates
with Lisp at the meta-object level. I don't know the details, nor do
I get a commission for mentioning it, but I'd recommend contacting them.
I'm sure there are expert system shells and constraint solvers written in
Lisp. How to go about looking for them seems more the problem. That's
an important issue, for sure, but it arguably isn't one that you should
take up on a disorganized newsgroup. I might suggest take it up with
individual Lisp vendors sales/marketing departments. I'd be surprised if
Franz couldn't help you, too.
Of course, you didn't say you were willing to pay money for a solution,
but I'm assuming if it has commercial value to you that you are.
> Therefore, again: could you give me a reason why we should use LISP?...
I posted a response to this under separate cover so won't repeat myself.
Andrzej Lewandowski
>Andrzej Lewandowski <lewand...@attglobal.net> writes:
>
>> We are currently using Prolog, but Prolog (despite its obvious
>> advantages) has obvious disadvantages. One is that it is pretty hard
>> (well... inconvenient) to write parts of the algorithm that have
>> purely procedural character. Since we are extending the product
>> lines, one obvious question is whether it would be reasonable and
>> justified to use something else instead of Prolog. LISP definitely
>> is the alternative, but... I have posted a qeustion about constraint
>> solver for LISP - it seems that nothing is available.
>
>Harlequin (now Xanalys) used to have an integrated Lisp/Prolog
>environment, I think. I don't know if it still does. And I think it
>has their KnowledgeWorks expert system shell, which is either the same
>thing or something similar -- I know it's something that integrates
>with Lisp at the meta-object level. I don't know the details, nor do
>I get a commission for mentioning it, but I'd recommend contacting them.
>
>I'm sure there are expert system shells and constraint solvers written in
>Lisp.
Expert systems, yes. What regards constraint solvers, there is one named Screamer, but it
is academic project abandoned in 1994 (and it seems, never finished). I am looking for
commercially supported stuff.
>How to go about looking for them seems more the problem. That's
>an important issue, for sure, but it arguably isn't one that you should
>take up on a disorganized newsgroup. I might suggest take it up with
>individual Lisp vendors sales/marketing departments.
Response mostly negative.
>Of course, you didn't say you were willing to pay money for a solution,
>but I'm assuming if it has commercial value to you that you are.
>
Exactly. I am looking for commercial solution, with support etc. But I am not going to pay
substantially more than for Prolog, C++ or Java solutions...
A.L.
Kenny Tilton
Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:
> I am not a troll.
it seemed that way since you did not offer all this other useful
background in your original somewhat contentious "one good reason"
challnege--didn't really seem like a question, and indeed it still seems
as if you have made up your mind and are just looking for a scrap. But
maybe that is just your style, so...
> I have posted a qeustion about constraint solver for LISP - it seems
> that nothing is available. There are several for Prolog, Java anc C++. I have also posted question
> about interfaces to commercial linear programming solvers. None. There are number of them
> for Prolog, C++ and Java.
Can you call these commercial packages thru the Lisp foreign function
interface? Would that be acceptable? We use a few third party packages
in our app, none of them in Lisp.
>
> Therefore, again: could you give me a reason why we should use LISP?...
>
I think first we need to figure out if you can get to the commercial
constraint systems you like from Lisp, or it does not matter how many
reasons there are for using Lisp. Is that right?
kenny
clinisys
Thomas F. Burdick
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2001 21:31:41 GMT, Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
> >How to go about looking for them seems more the problem. That's
> >an important issue, for sure, but it arguably isn't one that you should
> >take up on a disorganized newsgroup. I might suggest take it up with
> >individual Lisp vendors sales/marketing departments.
>
> Response mostly negative.
Did you tell them your situation, why you were considering Lisp, what
problem area you were going to be tackling, why you needed the
features you do, and did you sound receptive to help; or, did you post
a demand without any context, like you did on c.l.l?
If you spoke to the vendors like you initially did to this newsgroup,
I can understand the negative response. You didn't sound serious nor
receptive. Context is good, if you want help, give it.
av1...@comtv.ru
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Mercury/
maybe they can help you
--
mailto:ma...@pulsesoft.com
Marc Battyani
"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:5d9tut8kvj1dh20sn...@4ax.com...
<Marc.B...@fractalconcept.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"
> >I also think that trust *is* the major factor. This applies to in-house
and
> >even more to contract programming.
> >The trouble for new programmers is that they don't have the years of
> >practice that build that trust. They have to build it by solving problems
in
> >an efficient and clean way. (rather easy compared to the Java/C*/script
> >languages/etc. crowds)
> >
>
> Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or personal
opinions of
> this-or-that developer.
You are either naive or lucky...
> Developers don't decide about programming languages
Yes Sir!
If you are talking about corporate drones, then yes we agree, but these guys
don't decide on anything.
>unless this
> is single person, basement-type operation. These mechanisms cause that it
is very hard to
> convince management to use something that is not Java, C++ or VB.
>
> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason (other than
"because I like
> it") why LISP should be used instead of one of the above mentioned
languages.
There are lots of reasons why Lisp is currently the best way to write
software, but as you told us in other posts, you are not looking for this,
you just need a constraint solver.
Marc
Marc Battyani
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2001 18:09:10 GMT, "Coby Beck" <cb...@mercury.bc.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
> >news:5d9tut8kvj1dh20sn...@4ax.com...
> >> convince management to use something that is not Java, C++ or VB.
> >>
> >> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason (other
than
> >"because I like
> >> it") why LISP should be used instead of one of the above mentioned
languages.
> >>
> >
> >troll.
> >
>
> I am not a troll. I am in charge of selecting tools for AI-based
components of products
Your tone looks like you are trolling
> being developed by my company (it does't matter what is the name).
Curious people can find it in a few seconds just by typing your name + CLP
in google...
> Our business area is
> supply channel management and logistics. These AI based components are
mostly constraint
> programming and agents. We are currently using Prolog, but Prolog (despite
its obvious
> advantages) has obvious disadvantages. One is that it is pretty hard
(well...
> inconvenient) to write parts of the algorithm that have purely procedural
character. Since
> we are extending the product lines, one obvious question is whether it
would be reasonable
> and justified to use something else instead of Prolog. LISP definitely is
the alternative,
> but... I have posted a qeustion about constraint solver for LISP - it
seems that nothing
> is available. There are several for Prolog, Java anc C++. I have also
posted question
> about interfaces to commercial linear programming solvers. None. There are
number of them
> for Prolog, C++ and Java.
>
> Therefore, again: could you give me a reason why we should use LISP?...
Your problem is that you put a constraint : "Must have a commercially
supported constraint solver written in it"
So in *your* case, as it doesn't seem there is one in Lisp we can all infer
that you can't use Lisp.
It's like if somebody wants to write an Excel macro, Lisp will probably not
be the best solution to his needs.
Nobody said that Lisp was the solution for every problem in the world. Lisp
is the best solution to write programs to solve problems, but *you* don't
want to program, *you* want to use a constraint solver and nobody has ever
said that Lisp was the best solution to use a constraint solver. So *you*
have no reasons to use Lisp (at least in this case)
BTW .
Marc
Daniel Barlow
> VisualBasic is to BASIC as Modula-2 is to Pascal. It's not really the
> same language. But it does offer a good example of what CL needs to
Modula-2 is to Pascal as ANSI Common Lisp is to Lisp 1.5 ...
> the VisualCommonLisp project as soon as I figure out how to get CL to
> talk efficiently & easily to GTK.
You might want to look at cl-gtk and clg. clg packages for CMUCL just
went into cCLan, oddly enough
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/clg
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/cl-gtk
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/cCLan
-dan
--
http://ww.telent.net/cliki/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources
Bruce Hoult
Lewandowski <lewand...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> Technical decision in the industry are not based on "trust" or
> personal opinions of this-or-that developer. Developers don't
> decide about programming languages unless this is single person,
> basement-type operation. These mechanisms cause that it is very
> hard to convince management to use something that is not Java,
> C++ or VB.
I guess you're new.
When I started using C++ for production work in 1989 it was exactly as
hard to convince management to use C++ then (instead of C or Pascal or
FORTRAN) as it is to convince them to use CL or Dylan now.
C++ was established mostly from the grassroots level. Source-level
compatibilty with C helped it, but I don't think it was essential.
Java and VB seem to have some in more from the other end -- large
companies persuaded managament that they should use them, and they were
then imposed on developers.
> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason
> (other than "because I like it") why LISP should be used instead
> of one of the above mentioned languages.
Exactly the same reason that Java should often be used instead of C, but
squared.
Personally, I prefer Dylan, but I'd be perfectly happy to see CL start
to win, too.
-- Bruce
Kaz Kylheku
>jeff <jn...@houseofdistraction.com> writes:
>
>> VisualBasic is to BASIC as Modula-2 is to Pascal. It's not really the
>> same language. But it does offer a good example of what CL needs to
>
>Modula-2 is to Pascal as ANSI Common Lisp is to Lisp 1.5 ...
Modula 2 and Pascal are distinct languages, that lead parallel lives
and are separately standardized; so it's not exactly true that Pascal
is an obsolete version of Modula 2.
The Pascal standards are:
ISO 7185:1990 (Programming Languages --- Pascal) and
ISO 10206:1990 (Programming Languages --- Extended Pascal).
Both can be found in PostScript form on the net; I don't know whether
these are latest. Modula has these:
ISO 10514-1:1996 (Modula-2 --- Base Language)
ISO 10514-2:1998 (Modula-2 --- OO extension)
ISO 10514-3:1998 (Modula-2 --- Generic extension)
jeff
> jeff <jn...@houseofdistraction.com> writes:
>>the VisualCommonLisp project as soon as I figure out how to get CL to
>>talk efficiently & easily to GTK.
>>
>
> You might want to look at cl-gtk and clg. clg packages for CMUCL just
> went into cCLan, oddly enough
>
> http://ww.telent.net/cliki/clg
> http://ww.telent.net/cliki/cl-gtk
> http://ww.telent.net/cliki/cCLan
Really? Cool. How does it handle callbacks (i.e. the calling from C
into CMUCL problem)?
Andrzej Lewandowski
>Andrzej Lewandowski <lewand...@attglobal.net> writes:
>
>> On Sun, 11 Nov 2001 21:31:41 GMT, Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>> >How to go about looking for them seems more the problem. That's
>> >an important issue, for sure, but it arguably isn't one that you should
>> >take up on a disorganized newsgroup. I might suggest take it up with
>> >individual Lisp vendors sales/marketing departments.
>>
>> Response mostly negative.
>
>Did you tell them your situation, why you were considering Lisp, what
>problem area you were going to be tackling, why you needed the
>features you do, and did you sound receptive to help; or, did you post
>a demand without any context, like you did on c.l.l?
>
>If you spoke to the vendors like you initially did to this newsgroup,
>I can understand the negative response. You didn't sound serious nor
>receptive. Context is good, if you want help, give it.
I don't understand what the "tone" has to do here. Vendors are in money making business,
and, whoever they are, they are looking for customers. I do know how to talk to vendors,
you don't need to teach me. I posted "I am looking for CLP solver" message AFTER talking
to vendors, searching google, alta vista and all possible ways, as well as e-mailing and
calling people that are in constraint solving business. I don't know what "context" (and
WHAT context) of my question has anythuing in common with constraint solving, LISP and my
question.
A.L.
Andrzej Lewandowski
Yes, I know Mercury. Other option (even better) wpuld be Mozart-Oz www.mozart-oz.org
Unfortunately, both don't offer maintenance/support, both are experimental, and there is
no sufficient experience with applying this stuff in large commercial projects.
A.L.
Thomas F. Burdick
Who said anything about "tone" (besides you)? I don't know how the
commercial vendors budget their customer service time, but if you
didn't give them enough information to know what you were trying to
do, and if you didn't sound serious, I wouldn't be surprised if they
didn't take you as seriously as they would have if you sounded like a
serious request. You sure didn't sound serious at first, here.
Hannu Koivisto
| Expert systems, yes. What regards constraint solvers, there is
| one named Screamer, but it is academic project abandoned in 1994
Perhaps you should tell that to the authors, too; they might not be
aware that they have abandoned the project. The latest version
(which I got from the other author (Siskind) about two months ago)
I have mentions 1997 and I don't recall him mentioning that it is
abandoned.
| (and it seems, never finished). I am looking for commercially
| supported stuff.
I take it that asking whether the authors might be willing to sell
you commercial support is out of the question? On second thought,
if you ask them, I'd advice you not to tell your silly assumptions
about their "abandoned project" to them as truths.
*plonk*
--
Hannu
Andrzej Lewandowski
>
>
>Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:
>> I am not a troll.
>
>it seemed that way since you did not offer all this other useful
>background in your original somewhat contentious "one good reason"
>challnege--didn't really seem like a question, and indeed it still seems
>as if you have made up your mind and are just looking for a scrap. But
>maybe that is just your style, so...
>
>> I have posted a qeustion about constraint solver for LISP - it seems
>> that nothing is available. There are several for Prolog, Java anc C++. I have also posted question
>> about interfaces to commercial linear programming solvers. None. There are number of them
>> for Prolog, C++ and Java.
>
>Can you call these commercial packages thru the Lisp foreign function
>interface? Would that be acceptable? We use a few third party packages
>in our app, none of them in Lisp.
>
Yes, but this would be technical and economical nonsense. I can call these modules from
C++ already, and I can do in C++ what I can do in LISP (although I would prefer LISP).
Adding additional layer would have no sense. Moreover, such layer would increase all
possible costs - tools, implementation and runtime fees. Each time I want to introduce new
tool, I have to provide arguments that this new tool will simplify development, reduce
cost and reduce time to market. Bringing LISP as interafce between C++ and C++ could be
not justified. Bringing Prolog as constraint solver simplified a lot of things, reducing
essentially the development and reducing the cost
>>
>> Therefore, again: could you give me a reason why we should use LISP?...
>>
>
>I think first we need to figure out if you can get to the commercial
>constraint systems you like from Lisp, or it does not matter how many
>reasons there are for using Lisp. Is that right?
>
No. Question was rhetorical. In this sense I AM a troll :) I always consider amusing
discussions between guys from the academia on "what to do to make language XXX more
popular in the industry". By the way, this is not only LISP. See Eiffel, for example. In
most cases they have the same knowledge of industry as I have about Japanese dance
Kabuki. Don't be offended guys, I spent 25 years in the Academia. I know :)
Being serious: I want to know whether selecting Prolog was The Best Idea. Bringing Prolog
as constraint solver simplified a lot of things, reduced essentially the development and
runtime cost. As I have mentioned, from technical standpoint it is not the ideal one.
Maybe there is better solution. Or Prolog is the best. Who knows. Therefore, the
question: is there any other language that
1. Would replace Prolog and the associated functionality,
2. There is sufficient number of commercially available components or interfaces to these
components (constraints, LP solvers, database, COM),
3. Would have better run-time efficiency than Prolog,
4. Would have adequate support and maintenance,
5. Vendors would be in good financial health, thus giving guarantee that they will not go
belly-up next year. There should be more than a single vendor,
6. Using this language would be cost effective, with little impact on the bottom-line
(i.e. no runtime fees or small runtime fees),
7. Is the language known for long enough and is there established record of commercial
applications,
8. Is it easy to find EXPERIENCED programmers somewhere here, not, say in the Antarctica
(training is not the option),
9. How much such programmers would cost.
LISP is obvious candidate, with many positive answers, but not all. At least, for today.
A.L.
P.S. By the way, first time I was using LISP about 1970, on CDC 6600 and CDC 3170
"supercomputers"... This was fun. On punched cards.
Andrzej Lewandowski
wrote:
>
>>
>> Finally, maybe somebody would give me at least one good reason (other than
>"because I like
>> it") why LISP should be used instead of one of the above mentioned
>languages.
>
>There are lots of reasons why Lisp is currently the best way to write
>software, but as you told us in other posts, you are not looking for this,
>you just need a constraint solver.
>
I know that LISP is the best way of writing software, but for me, if it lacks constraint
solver it is useless. It lacks some other things that I consider critical. And that C++,
Java, VB, Prolog and others provide without troubles and with pleasure.
A.L.