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why Haskell hasn't replaced CL yet?

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Rainer Joswig

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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In article <B4D4F12A.5DAF%x...@xahlee.org>, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:

> i don't have the lisp defect and can enunciate those phases with clarity.

Concepts like "MOP" (see below) are mostly general computer science
concepts. If you don't know these, you might be careful claiming that
"surely" something is better.

> i sure hope you give at least some lip service to the terms you speak. can
> you explain MOP?

"Meta Object Protocol". Read the works from Gregor Kiczales (and others).
It means the the object system in this (case CLOS) is opened up,
so that you can query, manipulate, extend, modify its behaviour.
There is a book ("The Art of the Metaobject Protocol"), which
is seen as a very important contribution to computer science
(for example by Alan Kay, whose name should be familiar to you).

The MOP for example is one of the reason why CLOS is uptodate.
Its mechanism allows to adapt to changes, whithout
the need to invent a new programming language every
other week.

> i searched the web and found http://www.nichimen.com/, but
> i couldn't find any mention of lisp.

But you could see the information about Mirai? See the graphics
created with it? Sony, Nintendo and many other companies
are using it to create graphics for their games
(Super Mario 64, Final Fantasy, Zelda, ...).
Mirai is mostly written in Common Lisp. To be more
specific, it is Allegro Common Lisp from Franz.
That you can write such a high-end 3d application in Lisp
is a sign, that it has **real** practical use - if never seen
anything comparably mindblowing written in, say, Haskell.

> C++ will probably beat every point in
> comparison of those aspects.

C++ has neither a MOP nor dynamic objects. C++ has not the
flexibility of Lisp, etc.

> i understand that you probably think that CL is the best language on earth,

I didn't say that.

CL is the best language on earth for certain purposes.
For others it is not.

> but i wish any such proponent would give a list of languages where they are
> an expert as a context of their claim.

How about you? You were making a claim in the first place.

> surely no one here would claim that
> CL is better than _literally_ _all_ languages? More to the point, what
> languages you think are better or has the potential to be better than CL?

For certain applications you might look at Haskell, Dylan,
Smalltalk, C++, Objective C, Prolog, ...

Or not.

> ends up worse than the (possibly) legacy ridden CL?

"Legacy ridden" means that I can run fifteen year old software
in Common Lisp without changes, if you reformulate it positively.
Common Lisp is not your language if you want to
be forced to rewrite your software every other
year. Still a lot of software written in Lisp is on the leading
edge of (programming language) research.

> i was hoping someone with severe lisp paroxysm such as Doctor Naggum to
> irradiate my nescience, but i'm willing to learn from other paladins of
> lambda legacy and diehards.

What is the purpose of your question? From your sentences I read
that your are not really knowing what you are talking about
(in this case, sorry) and that you are trying to compare apples with oranges
and that you are making bold claims without knowing Common Lisp
or its uses.

In your case, why not formulate the question more neutral and
ask what the current uses of Common Lisp are and why
it is being used? And then make up your mind for yourself?

Rainer Joswig, ISION Internet AG, Harburger Schlossstrasse 1,
21079 Hamburg, Germany, Tel: +49 40 77175 226
Email: rainer...@ision.de , WWW: http://www.ision.de/

Tim Bradshaw

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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* Xah wrote:
> this message is for doctor Naggum.

Why didn't you mail it to him then, rather than starting yet another
futile meta-thread on c.l.l? He doesn't conceal his address.

> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?

> i mean, surely they are both superior than CL.

Of course they are. In fact, I strongly encourage you to go away and
program in these superior languages and allow us poor losers to carry
on using our 50s language in our sad little world in peace. We only
get all upset when people point out what idiots we all are.

Actually I hear rumours that Java is far superior to any of these
so-called `high-level' languages, should you consider that instead?

--tim

Michael Dingler

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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Christopher C Stacy wrote:
>
> It seems pointless to debate a vague claim that something is "better".

Butt ze Haskell lenkwedge iz pure, zerefore it musst be better,
Herr Stacy...

Well, sorry, just trying to avoid approaching Godwins law _that_
directly. I leave the task to anyone replying to this message.

To get a little bit more on-topic, why is it that a pure language
is often considered superior? Java is more pure than C++, therefore
it encourages pure OOP, which of course is better than OOP and
procedural programming mixed together, yadda yadda.

Or to approach this from a different angle: Did anything pure
ever succeed? Windows and UNIX certainly aren't. C? You're
joking, aren't you? And our favourite marvelous toy Lisp
doesn't purity, either.

Complexity seems to win most of the time. Or we all would
be bacterias.

...Michael...

David J. Cooper

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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Xah wrote:
>
> this message is for doctor Naggum.
>

Then why don't you email him directly, instead of trying to
incite some kind of useless flame war on the newsgroup for
your personal amusement?

By the way your sarcastic condenscending tone in calling him
``doctor'' comes through as exactly that. If you had any
true respect for him at all you would realize that Mr.
Naggum has far more important and pressing matters to
attend to than to humor your incipid posts, and he has
answered your ``questions'' many times over in the past
several years, if you would have the common decency to
spend a few hours looking through news archives and doing
a bit of thinking for yourself before posting such vague
and inflammatory swill.

-dave

--
David J. Cooper Jr, Chief Engineer Genworks International
dco...@genworks.com 5777 West Maple, Suite 130
(248) 932-2512 (Genworks HQ/voicemail) West Bloomfield, MI 48322-2268
(248) 407-0633 (pager) http://www.genworks.com

Xah

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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rainer,

don't drivel all over the place. try to read my previous two posts with
care. i'm a person of methodology and meticulousness. when you write, try to
make a diamond a word. don't ruin a fine troll with banal noise.

as to Haskell/Dylan vs CL, i do like to know the opinions on them from CL
devotee. i have already learned your opinion partially. i welcome more.

i wrote


> but i wish any such proponent would give a list of languages where they are
> an expert as a context of their claim.

rainer wrote


> How about you? You were making a claim in the first place.

sure, i'd be happy to give my opinions on languages if you or other insist.
i don't think anyone here is that interested. i'm not a master of many
languages. btw, i did not claim that Haskell or Dylan is superior to CL.
read with perceptiveness.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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> ... In fact, I strongly encourage you to go away and

> program in these superior languages and allow us poor losers to carry
> on using our 50s language in our sad little world in peace. We only
> get all upset when people point out what idiots we all are.

why so hash on a virgin lamb? i was only asking a question.

have you considered upgrading your brain to use the new emotion chip?
the new chip has better humor sensory. you can also activate the
laugh-to-death switch.

>Actually I hear rumours that Java is far superior to any of these
>so-called `high-level' languages, should you consider that instead?

why don't you java yourself?

now if you still have opinions on Haskell or Dylan, i'd be happy to hear it.
(i'm supposing you do have a sizable expertise in CL?)

c'mon. if you are compassionate about the quality of this newsgroup as you
appears to be, refrain from riposte and hit me with real content. your
actions speak better than your words.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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i wrote:
> this message is for doctor Naggum.

"David J. Cooper" <dco...@genworks.com> wrote


> Then why don't you email him directly, instead of trying to
> incite some kind of useless flame war on the newsgroup for
> your personal amusement?

Then why don't YOU email me directly, instead of trying to
incite a barb from me publicly?

> By the way your sarcastic condenscending tone in calling him
> ``doctor'' comes through as exactly that.

Yeah? what do you _know_ about me & Erik?

> If you had any
> true respect for him at all you would realize that Mr.
> Naggum has far more important and pressing matters to
> attend to

which includes posting prodigious off-topic condescending vagaries on this
newsgroup. agree?

> than to humor your incipid posts, and he has
> answered your ``questions'' many times over in the past
> several years, if you would have the common decency to
> spend a few hours looking through news archives and doing
> a bit of thinking for yourself before posting such vague
> and inflammatory swill.

_inSipid_ and swill? thank you, i've just re-learned the word swill. It is
in this precise manner than sometimes way off topic flame wars can benefits
all avid participants. care to flame back? By the way, as i've said in other
replies, i'm still interested in CL devotee's opinion on Haskell or Dylan.
maybe the ambience has already been spoiled. whether this came up before, or
will turn into a gigabyte rubbish flame war, is really not my
responsibility. thanks to, in part, righteous persons like you who tried to
meta-moderate in public with egoistic sincerity.

i could search newsgroup archives to formulate Erik's opinion on
Haskell/Dylan, but i'm not obliged to. in fact, in the past 2 years whenever
i had time reading c.l.l. i just search for Naggum's posts (and other
old-timers) but alas it became very tiring to scrutinize for real content in
his outrageous writings.

btw, it is thanks to Erik Naggum's daringly-public opinions, that i've
picked up the habit at least in informal writings to use all lowercase. have
YOU read his reasons for doing this? take your own advise and search
dejanews.com !

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


David Bakhash

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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this guy is clearly out to get Lisp people to flame him, and he's
probably laughing his ass off.

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

> i was hoping someone with severe lisp paroxysm such as Doctor Naggum to
> irradiate my nescience, but i'm willing to learn from other paladins of
> lambda legacy and diehards.

He probably spent a good hour on this paragraph, hitting his thesaurus
half a dozen times.

I'd say to let this loser go. He probably can't write code to save
his pathetic existence, and now he's somehow trying to attack a
language which he doesn't have a clue about.

I'd say, send this guy back to the C world, where he belongs. He'll
most likely never do anything worthwhile in the Lisp community, and
probably not in the software community either. But he'll fit in a lot
better elsewhere.


Robert Monfera

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to

David Bakhash wrote:
[...]

> I'd say to let this loser go. He probably can't write code to save
> his pathetic existence, and now he's somehow trying to attack a
> language which he doesn't have a clue about.
>
> I'd say, send this guy back to the C world, where he belongs. He'll
> most likely never do anything worthwhile in the Lisp community, and
> probably not in the software community either. But he'll fit in a lot
> better elsewhere.

Well said, David! He deserves a kick in the ass as the only sensible
answer (or whatever it takes to stop him polluting c.l.l.).

Robert

Marc Battyani

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
David Bakhash <ca...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:cxjputr...@engc.bu.edu...

> this guy is clearly out to get Lisp people to flame him, and he's
> probably laughing his ass off.
>
> Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:
>
> > i was hoping someone with severe lisp paroxysm such as Doctor Naggum to
> > irradiate my nescience, but i'm willing to learn from other paladins of
> > lambda legacy and diehards.
>
> He probably spent a good hour on this paragraph, hitting his thesaurus
> half a dozen times.

Here is a quote from his web site : "I believe that I may have a schizoid
personality disorder". No kidding!

> I'd say to let this loser go. He probably can't write code to save
> his pathetic existence, and now he's somehow trying to attack a
> language which he doesn't have a clue about.
>
> I'd say, send this guy back to the C world, where he belongs. He'll
> most likely never do anything worthwhile in the Lisp community, and
> probably not in the software community either. But he'll fit in a lot
> better elsewhere.

It's even worse, the poor guy is doing perl for a living. No wander why he
look at lisp people with such jealousy.
Here is another quote from his site : "Although I hate Perl, but Perl
programing is what I do for a living now"
In fact he also doesn't like Unix, windows and a lot of things.
Some last quotes just for the fun: "Is it possible to obtain absolute
control of one's mind? ... I wanted to train myself to have such
capability... The world is meaningless... unix is the motherhood of
everything sucks... Unix has this knack at brainwashing programers.
Monstrous moronity are perceived as the norm"

OK quoting don't render the whole thing so you can look at the remaining
delirium at : http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html

Cheers,

Marc Battyani


Stig Hemmer

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes on Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800:

> i mean, surely they are both superior than CL.
[with "they" refering to Haskell and Dylan]

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes on Sun, 20 Feb 2000 07:20:17 -0800:


> btw, i did not claim that Haskell or Dylan is superior to CL.

You really need to improve your memory.

Stig Hemmer,
Jack of a Few Trades.


Fernando

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 08:57:01 -0800, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:


>> By the way your sarcastic condenscending tone in calling him
>> ``doctor'' comes through as exactly that.
>
>Yeah? what do you _know_ about me & Erik?

Just one thing: you're now both in my kill file.

Get lost, will you?


//-----------------------------------------------
// Fernando Rodriguez Romero
//
// frr at mindless dot com
//------------------------------------------------

Fernando

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
On 20 Feb 2000 11:47:57 -0500, David Bakhash <ca...@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:


>I'd say, send this guy back to the C world, where he belongs.

Nope. Take a look at his site: he's a Perl programmer (no pun
intended, of course). };-)

Fernando

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:

>this message is for doctor Naggum.
>

>why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?

Sorry, but the doctor is right now busy flamming another
patient (Mr. Posey), so please come back later. Thank you. ;-)

Janos Blazi

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to

Fernando <spa...@must.die> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
g4a0bs00ufploafs4...@4ax.com...

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
>
> >this message is for doctor Naggum.
> >
> >why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?
>
> Sorry, but the doctor is right now busy flamming another
> patient (Mr. Posey), so please come back later. Thank you. ;-)


He must be a very good doctor if he has that many patients! And his fees are
moderate too... :)

Janos Blazi
>
>
>
>
> file://-----------------------------------------------


> // Fernando Rodriguez Romero
> //
> // frr at mindless dot com

> file://------------------------------------------------


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----

Tim Bradshaw

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
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* Xah wrote:

> now if you still have opinions on Haskell or Dylan, i'd be happy to hear it.

But surely, you were only after answers from Erik?

If instead you're after general opinions, I suggest you look in Deja
or somewhere and you'll find that these kind of discussions on c.l.l
(and I assume other groups) typically generate a whole bunch of bad
feeling and *no useful result at all*. If you want to have a useful
discussion it is a really good idea to start it with some useful input
rather than `i mean, surely they are both superior than CL'. Try
asking about some *technical issues*: `Dylan has sealing, could it be
added to CL and would this be a winning thing to do?' or something.

> (i'm supposing you do have a sizable expertise in CL?)

Yes, I know something about CL.

--tim

Robert Monfera

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to

Exactly! Puns with this level of intellectual investment and
sophistication are indeed rare here - can you write down diamond?

Robert

Rajappa Iyer wrote:
>
> OK,
>
> I can see that this guy is a troll, but credit where credit is due.
> He's a funny troll who writes with a clever turn of phrase. For
> instance, the following was a masterly pun:
>
> >> Can you say multiple platforms (Windows, diverse Unix, Mac,
> >> + several obscure machines, ...).


>
> >i don't have the lisp defect and can enunciate those phases with clarity.
>

> I'm afraid you were taken, Rainer. :-)

Coby Beck

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Feb 20, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/20/00
to
I think this groups sees enough pointless bickering without some airheaded
and totally transparent attempt to "swat the hornet's nest"

I would be quite surprised if Erik takes your bait.

Coby
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote in message news:B4D4AB19.5A99%x...@xahlee.org...


> this message is for doctor Naggum.
>
> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?
>

> i mean, surely they are both superior than CL. is that because the
advanced
> theory of economy that superior products will never be as popular as
> inferior products? how does this theory apply to Haskell/Dylan/CL? due to
my
> limited knowledge, i can not fathom but guess that it's because CL has the
> power of massive legacy. as can be seen in C or unix, that prowess of
legacy
> is not to be ignored. however, the key question to me is whether CL has
> technical clout over Haskell or Dylan. could you please exercise your
expert
> opinion?
>
> thanks.
>
> ps none comp.lang.lisp dweller needs not reply.
>
> Xah
> x...@xahlee.org
> http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html
>

Christopher Browne

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Coby Beck would say:

>Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote in message news:B4D4AB19.5A99%x...@xahlee.org...
>> this message is for doctor Naggum.
>>
>> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?
>
>I think this groups sees enough pointless bickering without some
>airheaded and totally transparent attempt to "swat the hornet's
>nest"
>
>I would be quite surprised if Erik takes your bait.

#erik would be pretty stupid to do so; the .signature below is a
useful retort.

Dylan has the merit of having some of the same designers behind it
that were behind CL, and in having the clean slate that CL didn't
have. Unfortunately, that lack of "legacy" means that there was no
code to port to it.

And I'm surprised that Haskell is being promoted; the "truly, and
almost purely, functional" language that has actually grown to have
multiple implementations and to have potent development tools seems
instead to be ML. OCAML does look rather interesting, and there are
actually some *somewhat* meaningful applications written in it.

But arguing over it leads to "dung fights," and the given is that in
such battles, everyone involves winds up smelling really bad.
--
"Bawden is misinformed. Common Lisp has no philosophy. We are held
together only by a shared disgust for all the alternatives."
-- Scott Fahlman, explaining why Common Lisp is the way it is....
cbbr...@hex.net - - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>

Raymond Wiker

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
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Stig Hemmer <st...@gnoll.pvv.ntnu.no> writes:

> Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes on Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800:


> > i mean, surely they are both superior than CL.

> [with "they" refering to Haskell and Dylan]
>
> Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes on Sun, 20 Feb 2000 07:20:17 -0800:
> > btw, i did not claim that Haskell or Dylan is superior to CL.
>
> You really need to improve your memory.

He also needs to concentrate _less_ on using [cruel and] unusual
words, and _more_ on forming complete, parseable and unambiguous
sentences.

BTW: On his web site, he claims to be an expert Mathematica
programmer. Mathematica is just an application[1], so isn't this like
claiming to be a Microsoft Word Wizard?

Footnotes:
[1] Yeah, I know...

--
Raymond Wiker, Orion Systems AS
+47 370 61150

Raymond Wiker

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
"Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de> writes:

> Fernando <spa...@must.die> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
> g4a0bs00ufploafs4...@4ax.com...

> > On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:
> >
> > >this message is for doctor Naggum.
> > >
> > >why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?
> >

> > Sorry, but the doctor is right now busy flamming another
> > patient (Mr. Posey), so please come back later. Thank you. ;-)
>
>
> He must be a very good doctor if he has that many patients! And his fees are
> moderate too... :)

Bzzzt... wrong... Doctor Naggum has *very little* patience.

Christian Lynbech

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
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>>>>> "Janos" == Janos Blazi <jbl...@netsurf.de> writes:

>> Can you say libraries?

Janos> What do you mean by that? Are there standard libraries for CL?
Janos> (Actually one of the shortcomings of CL in my eyes is the lack
Janos> of such libraries (like C has for example and even Python). I
Janos> think the the c.l.l community could create such libraries in 6
Janos> months... sigh.

Some of the reason for that is that CL needs much less libraries
because it contains so much more than for instance C or Scheme.

Compare the weight of CLtL with R?RS for reference.


---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech | Ericsson Telebit A/S
Fax: +45 8628 8186 | Fabrikvej 11, DK-8260 Viby J
Phone: +45 8738 2228 | email: c...@tbit.dk --- URL: http://www.tbit.dk
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
- pet...@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)

Marco Antoniotti

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

> this message is for doctor Naggum.
>
> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?

Wrong syntax.

For Haskell there is also the problem of requiring quite a bit of
mathematical terminology and of being more "rigid" than CL or Dylan.

> i mean, surely they are both superior than CL. is that because the advanced
> theory of economy that superior products will never be as popular as
> inferior products? how does this theory apply to Haskell/Dylan/CL? due to my
> limited knowledge, i can not fathom but guess that it's because CL has the
> power of massive legacy. as can be seen in C or unix, that prowess of legacy
> is not to be ignored. however, the key question to me is whether CL has
> technical clout over Haskell or Dylan. could you please exercise your expert
> opinion?

I am not claiming to be an expert. :)

Cheers

--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa

Espen Vestre

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
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Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

> you explain MOP? i searched the web and found http://www.nichimen.com/, but


> i couldn't find any mention of lisp.

Please learn to use a web search engine and come back here when you're done.

I don't know why Nichimen Graphics are relatively quiet about their lisp
usage (I say relatively because you can find the word lisp both on their
job advertisement page and in their FAQ, and they are also mentioned on
http://www.franz.com), but I can see two reasons for not spreading the
word when you're using lisp: First, thousands of ignorants of your kind are
spreading wrong information on lisp, which makes 'we use lisp' not a
particulary good marketing slogan. Second, some users of lisp consider
it to be such a competitive advantage that they want to keep that secret
for themselves.
--
(espen)

Pierre R. Mai

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Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
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Christian Lynbech <c...@tbit.dk> writes:

> Janos> What do you mean by that? Are there standard libraries for CL?
> Janos> (Actually one of the shortcomings of CL in my eyes is the lack
> Janos> of such libraries (like C has for example and even Python). I
> Janos> think the the c.l.l community could create such libraries in 6
> Janos> months... sigh.
>
> Some of the reason for that is that CL needs much less libraries
> because it contains so much more than for instance C or Scheme.
>
> Compare the weight of CLtL with R?RS for reference.

There is also less willingness to produce the sort of throw-away
libraries that are common in other languages, for areas where the
issues involved in providing a decent, _stable_ interface have not
been understood yet by the implementors.

Whether this is good (i.e. mostly only high-quality, stable libraries
available for CL), or bad (cf. the worse is better argument by
Gabriel) is IMHO not clear. I certainly can see the reasoning that CL
could use some dirty but useable libraries for quick&dirty things
(like much WWW work) which can then evolve into real CL libraries.
Without this kind of unhindered public experimentation, starvation
might occur.

OTOH I see the problems which are caused by the Perl phenomenon (a
host of small, often unstable, quickly obsoleted libraries), too, and
I'm happy to produce software whose life-time will exceed that of the
package de-jour which will be obsolete by next year.

To put it another way: It's nice to be able to quickly produce
something useful with little effort using libraries. It's even nicer
to produce something very useful with reduced effort using libraries.
It's much nicer still if this work will be maintainable with reduced
(instead of increased) effort because of stably co-evolving libraries.

Anyway, it seems that some movement has come into the open CL library
market, so let's see how we might try to get the best of both worlds.

Turning to Alan Perlis' quip, we might say that Common Lisp programmers
know the cost of many things, as well as their values. ;)

Regs, Pierre.

--
Pierre Mai <pm...@acm.org> PGP and GPG keys at your nearest Keyserver
"One smaller motivation which, in part, stems from altruism is Microsoft-
bashing." [Microsoft memo, see http://www.opensource.org/halloween1.html]

Paolo Amoroso

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
:)

On Sat, 19 Feb 2000 20:18:33 -0800, Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote:

> this message is for doctor Naggum.

Dr. Naggum is busy visiting his patients. May I help you?


> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?

Dr. Naggum has been my physician for years. Since I am just a patient, I am
clueless: I don't know whether Common Lispirin is a better drug than
Dylanzac or Haskell 100 Retard. But Dr. Naggum says that it is a very good
remedy against C++rrhosis and Perlitonitis, the occupational diseases of
programmers.


Paolo

:)
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/

Paolo Amoroso

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
On Sun, 20 Feb 2000 09:51:08 +0100, "Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de>
wrote:

> has for example and even Python). I think the the c.l.l community could
> create such libraries in 6 months... sigh.

That's exactly what the community is doing. Check:

CLOCC - Common Lisp Open Code Collection
http://clocc.sourceforge.net/

Lambda Codex
https://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=2041


Paolo

Scott E. Fahlman

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

> why Haskell or Dylan hasn't replaced CL yet?

On the remote chance that you really are looking for information
instead of (or in addition to) just trying to stir up a fight with
Erik Naggum...

CL and Dylan are in slightly different parts of the design space. CL
offers great runtime flexibility, but at the cost of carrying around
substantial parts of its program development environment at runtime --
rather like a tortoise carrying its house around. "Delivery modes"
that produce compact CL applications arrived late in the game and are
only a partial solution.

Dylan started out close to CL in its goals, but with a greater
emphasis on runtime efficiency and separation of the programming
environment from the runtime support. For this, the designers gave up
some runtime flexibility and some faciliities for introspection. They
also took the opportunity to clean up the design and jettison about
20 years of accumulated barnacles.

(The Dylan syntax was also modified in an attempt to appeal more to
"mainstream" programmers raised on infix languages such as C. Given
Dylan's goals, that was probably a good idea, but in my personal view
the attempt was botched, making it very hard to produce a macro system
with the power and elegance that we see in various Lisp dialects.)

Unfortunately, Dylan was strangled in the crib by its parents. During
Apple's near-death experience, they first strung out Dylan development
and then killed the whole lab that was supporting it. Harlequin's
effort got farther, but suffered a similar fate. My group at CMU
reluctantly moved to Java, and were later blown away by DARPA
insanity.

A few refugees still carry the Dylan torch, and I wish them well. But
a great deal of ground has now been lost to Java, Perl, and C++, and
some projects have reverted to CL. So we may never know how well
Dylan might have succeeded on its own merits.

I have less first-hand experience with Haskell, but its strong and
deep commitment to a mostly-pure functional style puts it in a very
different part of the design space from these other languages.
Haskell may have its own niche, but it is not a direct competitor to
CL or Dylan. Neither, by the way, are the various flavors of ML,
which place type-safety above all other virtues.

Probably the real answer to your question is that Haskell and Dylan
have not displaced CL because Java beat them to it. I believe that CL
will survive (until some worthy successor comes along) because it is
still by far the best language for building really complex systems in
an incremental, evolutionary style. Some large "AI style" projects
can't live without it. But in many gray areas where Java is
sufficient (not better -- just sufficient), Java has won.

-- Scott

===========================================================================
Scott E. Fahlman Internet: s...@cs.cmu.edu
Principal Research Scientist Phone: 412 268-2575
Department of Computer Science Fax: 412 268-5576
Carnegie Mellon University Latitude: 40:26:46 N
5000 Forbes Avenue Longitude: 79:56:55 W
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Mood: :-)
===========================================================================

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
Fernando wrote:

> >I'd say, send this guy back to the C world, where he belongs.
>

> ... he's a Perl programmer (no pun intended, of course).

Just a blantant oxymoron ;)

Cheers,

:) will

Janos Blazi

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
An additional question:
How would you judge the chances or merits of Python? Will it survive?

janos Blazi

Scott E. Fahlman <s...@cs.cmu.edu> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
ydn1ou7...@myrddin.gwydion.cs.cmu.edu...

David J. Cooper

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
"Scott E. Fahlman" wrote:
>
> (The Dylan syntax was also modified in an attempt to appeal more to
> "mainstream" programmers raised on infix languages such as C.
>

Lately I have been wondering about this. Why is C considered an
"infix" language? Only a small subset of its operators are used
in an infix syntax, mostly simple arithmetic operators like "+"
and "-". Normal function calls are done using prefix notation
just like CL, are they not? The parentheses are just in a
slightly different position.

So languages like C are not really "infix" at all -- they are
a confused mixture of infix, prefix, and other really strange
stuff like var++ (what's that??)

The bottom line is that CL has a consistent syntax while
languages like C or Java do not. End of story.


-dave


--
David J. Cooper Jr, Chief Engineer Genworks International
dco...@genworks.com 5777 West Maple, Suite 130
(248) 932-2512 (Genworks HQ/voicemail) West Bloomfield, MI 48322-2268
(248) 407-0633 (pager) http://www.genworks.com

Robert Monfera

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to

"David J. Cooper" wrote:

> [...] really strange


> stuff like var++ (what's that??)

Postfix.

Hartmann Schaffer

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
In article <CzOxOBcu4FxVfRy8=W26DF...@4ax.com>,
Paolo Amoroso <amo...@mclink.it> writes:
> ...
> Lambda Codex
> https://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=2041

page not found

--

Hartmann Schaffer

It is better to fill your days with life than your life with days

Kimmo T Takkunen

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
In article <38b17...@goliath.newsfeeds.com>, Janos Blazi wrote:
>An additional question:
>How would you judge the chances or merits of Python? Will it survive?
>
>janos Blazi

See:
<http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html>
Python for Lisp Programmers

Summary:"Python seems to be well-suited for many of the tasks that Lisp
is well-suited for, except those that require high performance."

-- Kimmo
((lambda (integer)
(coerce (loop for i upfrom 0 by 8 below (integer-length integer)
collect (code-char (ldb (byte 8 i) integer))) 'string))
100291759904362517251920937783274743691485481194069255743433035)

Arthur Lemmens

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to

"Scott E. Fahlman" wrote:

> I believe that CL will survive (until some worthy successor comes along)
> because it is still by far the best language for building really complex
> systems in an incremental, evolutionary style.

Yes, that's one of CL's niches.
But it's not the only one.

I earn my living writing rather simple programs. Almost all my programs are
less than 15,000 lines (and half of that is typically recycled library code).
Most of my projects take somewhere between 2 weeks and 2 months of my time.

So: nothing 'really complex' or 'incremental, evolutionary' here. But for
me, switching from C/C++ to Common Lisp is the best thing I've ever done in
my career. Now that I use CL, I can suggest simple 1-month projects to my
clients that would have taken half a year (and would have been way too
expensive) before. Programming is fun again, like it used to be 15 years
ago.

The flexibility and clarity that CL offers, is not only important for
'large "AI style" projects'. It may be even more useful for small projects
where deadlines and time-to-market constraints force you to either write
simple, flexible and understandable programs or spend most of your time
chasing bugs.

Arthur Lemmens

P.S. Before I switched to Common Lisp (about two years ago), I took a serious
look at Haskell, Dylan and Java as well.
I didn't choose Haskell, because:
- there was no industrial-strength compiler with a good Windows GUI
library
- I couldn't convince myself that lazy functional programming didn't
result in memory leaks at unpredictable times
I didn't choose Dylan, because:
- it was too young and uncertain
- the promise of more runtime efficiency wasn't as important for me
as the lack of a powerful and elegant macro system
- I've never been able to swallow Dylan's switch from prefix to infix
I didn't choose Java, because:
- well, why should I? The only reason for preferring Java to Common
Lisp is that everybody else is using it.


Scott E. Fahlman

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
"Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de> writes:

> An additional question:
> How would you judge the chances or merits of Python? Will it survive?

Well, I haven't used Python myself. By reputation, it's kind of an
ugly and awkward design, but has a lot of built-in functionality that
makes it easy to do certain kinds of tasks with little effort. Those
language always seem to survive in their specialized niches until
something better comes along to evict them. usually the "something
better" is not more general, but is yet another niche-dweller.

My own guess is that Python will go the way of Snobol, Forth, Prolog,
and so on -- a slow fade over time, with some fanatical adherents
still hanging on. But that's just a guess from someone far outside
the Python culture.

-- Scott


Pierre R. Mai

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
Robert Monfera <mon...@fisec.com> writes:

And the hodge-podge of prefix, infix and postfix that is your average
Algol-like language syntax (whether C, Pascal, Ada or what have you),
is often called misfix (from mixfix) by those who loathe it and the
complexities (for both compilers and users) that this causes... ;)

Larry Elmore

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
"Pierre R. Mai" <pm...@acm.org> wrote in message
news:87u2j25...@orion.dent.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de...

> Robert Monfera <mon...@fisec.com> writes:
>
> > "David J. Cooper" wrote:
> >
> > > [...] really strange
> > > stuff like var++ (what's that??)
> >
> > Postfix.
>
> And the hodge-podge of prefix, infix and postfix that is your average
> Algol-like language syntax (whether C, Pascal, Ada or what have you),
> is often called misfix (from mixfix) by those who loathe it and the
> complexities (for both compilers and users) that this causes... ;)

Just out of curiousity, what would you call J or APL's notation?

Larry

Xah

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
s...@cs.cmu.edu (Scott E. Fahlman) wrote:
> Well, I haven't used Python myself. By reputation, it's kind of an
> ugly and awkward design, but has a lot of built-in functionality that
> makes it easy to do certain kinds of tasks with little effort. Those
> language always seem to survive in their specialized niches until
> something better comes along to evict them. usually the "something
> better" is not more general, but is yet another niche-dweller.
>
> My own guess is that Python will go the way of Snobol, Forth, Prolog,
> and so on -- a slow fade over time, with some fanatical adherents
> still hanging on. But that's just a guess from someone far outside
> the Python culture.

HhhuuH ???

--

Now after given some insight and inside info on Dylan/CL, Dr. Fahlman
proceeds to stamp out other languages by wanton speculation on the demise of
Python?

Thank you Scott for the info on Dylan and CL. It's very much appreciated by
me, and no doubt by many others here.

As to the Python speech, thanks to Xah for pointing out a crime and set
newbie bystanders straight. We do suffer from conceit at times.

Python (which i'm indifferent) has probably more users than CL, used in more
application than CL, and picking up users faster than probably all lisps
with two or more of O'Reilly publications and much mention in the Linux
crowd, and is decidedly here to live longer than CL.

For those linguists out there, there's a new language in the Perl/Python
class called Ruby from Japan. Here's it's website:
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
it's similar in looks to Perl but is supposedly more pure OOP and
well-designed than even Python.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Xah

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
> "David J. Cooper" wrote:
>> [...] really strange
>> stuff like var++ (what's that??)

Robert Monfera <mon...@fisec.com> wrote
> Postfix.

shut your pie-hole if you don't know what you are talking about.

Ken Pitman wrote about this about 2 years ago, and from the message he
either implied or stated that he's been tired of clarifying this issue.
Search dejanews.com.
(Ken Pitman is one of the founder or leader in lisps.
http://world.std.com/~pitman/
)

I'll clarify your brain with my own version.

The common name for the lisp way is Fully Parenthesized Prefix Notation.
This syntax is the most straightforward to represent a tree, but it's not
the only choice. For example, one could have Fully Parenthesized Postfix
Notation by simply moving the semantics of the first element to the last.
You write
(arg1 arg2 ... f) instead of the usual (f arg1 arg2)

Like wise, you can essentially move f anywhere and still make sense. In
Mathematica, they put the f in front of the paren, and use square brackets
instead. e.g. f[a, b, c], Sin[3], Map[f, list] ...etc.
The f in front of parent makes better conventional sense until f is itself a
list which then we'll see things like f[a,b][c, g[3,h]] etc. It's worse when
there are arbitrary nesting of heads.

A _prefix notation_ in Mathematica is represented as f@arg. Essentially, a
prefix notation limits you to one argument. More example:
f@a@b@c
is equivalent to
f[a[b[c]]] or in lispy (f (a (b c))).
A postfix notation is similar. In Mathematica it's, e.g. c//b//a//f. One can
say, for example
List[1,2,3]//Sin
which is syntactically equivalent to
Sin[List[1,2,3]] or Sin@List[1,2,3]
which is semantically equivalent to
Map[Sin, List[1,2,3]]
in Mathematica. For infix notation, one puts symbols between arguments. In
Mathematica, the canonical form for infix notation is by sandwiching tilde
around the function name. e.g.
Join[List[1,2],List[3,4]]
can be written as
List[1,2] ~Join~ List[3,4].

In general, when we say C is a infix notation language, we don't mean it's
strictly infix but the situation is one-size-fits-all for convenience.
Things like i++ or ++i is more or less an arbitrary sugar syntax. (that is,
ad hoc syntax variation without any comprehensive design or theory base.)

In Mathematica for example, there is quite a lot syntax sugar besides the
above mentioned regular ones. For instance, Plus[a,b,c] can be written in
the following ways:
(a+b)+c
a+b+c
(a+b)~Plus~c
Plus@(3+4)
Plus@Plus[3,4]
Plus[3,4]//Plus

The gist being that certain functions such as Plus are assigned a special
symbol '+' with particular syntax form to emulate convention. One can also
do i++, ++i, i+=1 for instances. Another example: Times[a,b] can be written
as a*b or just a b.

In Haskell, which i'm starting to learn, there is also similar constructs
for the turning an Function (i.e. keyword) into an operator with infix
notation by regular constructs. e.g.
3 + 4
is equivalent to
(+) 3 4

anyone know Haskell better please extend.

As a side note, the Perl mongers are proud of their slogan of There Are More
Than One Way To Do It in their gazillion of ad hoc syntax sugars but unaware
that in functional languages (such as Mathematica) that there are consistent
and generalized constructs that can generate far far more syntax variations
than the ad hoc prefixed Perl both in theory AND in practice. (and in lisps,
macros does the same.) And, more importantly, they clamor about Perl's
"expressiveness" more or less on the useless syntax level but don't realize
that semantic expression is what's really important. I don't know about Lisp
really, but I know in Mathematica and i've read in Haskell that there are
constructs whose power and concept is beyond imperative programers can
apprehend.

Now back to syntax... anyone care to add?

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

unread,
Feb 21, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/21/00
to
some error in my previous post.

i wrote


> (a+b)+c
> a+b+c
> (a+b)~Plus~c
> Plus@(3+4)
> Plus@Plus[3,4]
> Plus[3,4]//Plus

should've been

(a+b)+c
a+b+c
(a+b)~Plus~c
Plus@(a+b+c)
Plus@Plus[a,b,c]
Plus[a,b,c]//Plus

i wrote:
> I don't know about Lisp
> really, but I know in Mathematica and i've read in Haskell that there are
> constructs whose power and concept is beyond imperative programers can
> apprehend.

but I do know that the same thing can be said for lisp. I meant to say that
i wasn't qualified to expound on lisp.

i wrote:
> The gist being that certain functions such as Plus are assigned a special
> symbol '+' with particular syntax form to emulate convention. One can also
> do i++, ++i, i+=1 for instances. Another example: Times[a,b] can be written
> as a*b or just a b.

btw, the canonical form or FullForm as called in Mathematica for those i++
are:

Increment[i] for i++

AddTo[i,1] for i+=1

PreIncrement[i] for ++i

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Michael Hudson

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
s...@cs.cmu.edu (Scott E. Fahlman) writes:

> "Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de> writes:
>
> > An additional question:
> > How would you judge the chances or merits of Python? Will it survive?
>

> Well, I haven't used Python myself.

Oh, come on!

> By reputation, it's kind of an
> ugly and awkward design, but has a lot of built-in functionality that
> makes it easy to do certain kinds of tasks with little effort.

Where did you read that? It's almost completely ass-backwards!

> Those language always seem to survive in their specialized niches
> until something better comes along to evict them. usually the
> "something better" is not more general, but is yet another
> niche-dweller.

Python is not (particularly) specialised. It's not as general as CL,
mind.

> My own guess is that Python will go the way of Snobol, Forth, Prolog,
> and so on -- a slow fade over time, with some fanatical adherents
> still hanging on.

You may be right. It's not fading yet, though. Maybe you were
thinking of some other language.

> But that's just a guess from someone far outside the Python culture.

What was the point of posting that piece of malinformed rubbish? I
don't intend to start a language war (I like Python, I hope it does
well so I can one day get a job programming it rather than
C++/Perl/Java if lisp jobs are lacking), but I know c.l.l gets
aggravated when people post misinformation about lisp, and we should
know better.

Regards,
Michael

--
very few people approach me in real life and insist on proving they are
drooling idiots. -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp

Jonathan Coupe

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

Kimmo T Takkunen <ktak...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:slrn8b33t9....@sirppi.helsinki.fi...

janos Blazi
>
> See:
> <http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html>
> Python for Lisp Programmers
>
> Summary:"Python seems to be well-suited for many of the tasks that Lisp
> is well-suited for, except those that require high performance."
>

Personally I'd be much more nervous about Python's lack of true GC. The last
time I snooped the python newsgroup there was some concern over this by
people using Python for larger projects and for programs that have to be
left running for long periods. Python cooperates with C very nicely for
optimisation purposes. The *practical* difference speed difference isn't
nearly the 100 to 1 that Norvig implies, in my experience. I still strongly
prefer Lisp, however. To my surprise one of the main reasons is
readability - with a little practice Lisp is much readble than Python,
something I'd never have expected. And its definitely more "designable" - ie
capable of being used to fit whatever reasonable design I come up with.

Jonathan Coupe

Janos Blazi

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
If I may ask you: Which CL implementation are you using? Are you using only
one CL implementation?
Janos Blazi

Arthur Lemmens <lem...@simplex.nl> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
38B1BA6D...@simplex.nl...

Scott E. Fahlman

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Michael Hudson <mw...@cam.ac.uk> writes:

> What was the point of posting that piece of malinformed rubbish? I
> don't intend to start a language war (I like Python, I hope it does
> well so I can one day get a job programming it rather than
> C++/Perl/Java if lisp jobs are lacking), but I know c.l.l gets
> aggravated when people post misinformation about lisp, and we should
> know better.

Yeah, you're right. I was just trying to respond to a question, but I
shouldn't have ventured an opinion about Python without doing a lot
more research.

The uses of Python that I had looked at were in specialized niches
such as XML programming. They made use of some nice modules and
libraries that the user community had written. So Python was
classified in my head as basically a scripting language with a few
poweful facilities that give it an advantage in certain niches. Kind
of like PERL, but a bit more elegant and with better support for an OO
style.

But upon further investigation, I see that Python really is more
general than I gave it credit for. It began as a scripting langauge,
but seems to have developed into a nice little "Swiss Army Knife".

When viewed as a scripting language, Python is a lot cleaner and a lot
more general than most. In particular, it seems very useful for
adding an interpreter-like wrapper to applications written in other
langauges. It's probably unfair to refer to that as a "niche".

If viewed as a programming language for serious, large-scale,
long-lived software projects that have to produce reasonably efficient
code, it looks to me like Python has some serious drawbacks and
omissions. Some serious Python users complain about this; others
claim the language is great for large-scale projects. I have nothing
useful to add to that discussion, and this newsgroup is probably not
the right place for it. However, if someone has extensive experience
with both CL and Python for similar large-scale projects, I think a
comparison -- or just a collection of war stories -- would be welcome
here.

Personally, I like to use CL for most tasks where others would reach
for Python or Perl or some scripting language. Scripts have a nasty
way of evolving into real programs that have to be maintained,
debugged, and sometimes tuned and compiled. CL may be overkill for
smallish tasks, but it's nice not to have a discontinuity between
small and large tasks. Your mileage may vary.

-- Scott


Martin Rodgers

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

> anyone know Haskell better please extend.

I recommend comp.lang.functional, where they have extensive knowledge
of Haskell, Haskell compilers, and Haskell applications. They're also
very realistic about the current state of the language. Not only will
all your questions be answered there (if they can't answer, who can?),
your reception _may_ be a little friendlier.

After all, it's not polite to compare a language with 40 years of
maturity with a language that has only 10 years. Imagine if you
compared women like that? Hmm, human languages? "English is spoken by
more people than French, so why hasn't English replaced French?" Ask a
few French nationalists. I doubt their replies will be at all polite!

I gave up on the prefix/infix/postfix debate a few decades ago.

Followup adjusted.
--
Email address intentionally munged | You can never browse enough
"Ahh, well. Back to reality." -- Mark Radcliffe

Marco Antoniotti

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

This preamble is for Erik Naggum! DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT READ THE
FOLLOWING LINK!

Everybody else, read at your own risk. :)

http://www.strout.net/python/pythonvslisp.html

Marco Antoniotti

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

"Larry Elmore" <ljel...@montana.campuscw.net> writes:

> "Pierre R. Mai" <pm...@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:87u2j25...@orion.dent.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de...
> > Robert Monfera <mon...@fisec.com> writes:
> >

> > > "David J. Cooper" wrote:
> > >
> > > > [...] really strange
> > > > stuff like var++ (what's that??)
> > >

> > > Postfix.
> >
> > And the hodge-podge of prefix, infix and postfix that is your average
> > Algol-like language syntax (whether C, Pascal, Ada or what have you),
> > is often called misfix (from mixfix) by those who loathe it and the
> > complexities (for both compilers and users) that this causes... ;)
>
> Just out of curiousity, what would you call J or APL's notation?

Ideograms. The Asian (and ancient Egyptian) crowd may appreciate it
better than people from the Eternal City. :)

Espen Vestre

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Marco Antoniotti <mar...@parades.rm.cnr.it> writes:

> Everybody else, read at your own risk. :)

oh no, please, we've been through that one on the mcl mailing list
lately. That comparision is so bad and so boring, couldn't you
please have left it alone?
--
(espen)

Marco Antoniotti

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

Mathematica is (at least it was) a glorified Lisp interpreter, which,
BTW, got a lot of things wrong when it came to defining its "language"
(e.g. variable scoping).

Marco Antoniotti

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

Espen Vestre <espen@*do-not-spam-me*.vestre.net> writes:

I apologize. :{ I just couldn't resist.

Chris Double

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
"Janos Blazi" <jbl...@netsurf.de> writes:

> How would you judge the chances or merits of Python? Will it
> survive?

There was a post in comp.lang.dylan a couple of months back where the
poster mentioned that in the December 1999 issue of Linux Journal,
Guido van Rossum (the creator of Python) in an interview mentioned
Dylan as "...everything Python is plus so much more...".

I hesitate to mention it as I haven't read the article in question,
don't know the context of the statement and don't want to fuel any
flames but I'm curious if anyone read and can comment on the article.

Chris.

Xah

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Marco Antoniotti <mar...@parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote

> Mathematica is (at least it was) a glorified Lisp interpreter, which,
> BTW, got a lot of things wrong when it came to defining its "language"
> (e.g. variable scoping).

your crime here is bloat of conceit. A major symptom among learned man.
Perhaps you need to make an appointment with doctor Naggum too. If you call
Mathematica in whatever stage a glorified Lisp interpreter, then you might
as well call any functional language that.

I don't like to advocate commercial software, but Mathematica today is quite
many things then a language or computer algebra system.

> BTW, got a lot of things wrong when it came to defining its "language"
> (e.g. variable scoping).

yeah? I'd be interested to hear your opinion in detail. If i'm not mistaken,
i think comp.lang.lisp people would also be interested in hearing occasional
informative discussions of lisp descendents.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Marco Antoniotti

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> writes:

> Marco Antoniotti <mar...@parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote
> > Mathematica is (at least it was) a glorified Lisp interpreter, which,
> > BTW, got a lot of things wrong when it came to defining its "language"
> > (e.g. variable scoping).
>
> your crime here is bloat of conceit. A major symptom among learned man.
> Perhaps you need to make an appointment with doctor Naggum too. If you call
> Mathematica in whatever stage a glorified Lisp interpreter, then you might
> as well call any functional language that.

Why not? Isn't lambda calculus at the core of functional programming anyway?

Don't you remember that one of the very first implementations of
Haskell was actually a CMUCL image dump? :)

> I don't like to advocate commercial software, but Mathematica today is quite
> many things then a language or computer algebra system.
>
> > BTW, got a lot of things wrong when it came to defining its "language"
> > (e.g. variable scoping).
>
> yeah? I'd be interested to hear your opinion in detail. If i'm not mistaken,
> i think comp.lang.lisp people would also be interested in hearing occasional
> informative discussions of lisp descendents.

You should have checked my use of tenses. Anyway, while playing
(indeed many years ago) with the remote evaluation facility of
Mathematica you had to eventually hack up a cons-like data structure
to get it evaluated. Hence the re-affirmation of the principle that
every sufficiently complicated "system" contains a Lisp interpreter :)

As per the comment about language design choices, I'll have to dig out
old notes about "local" variable handling and so forth.

I know very well that Mathematica is a very useful and very powerful
system (so are Maple, and Macsyma). Yet, what I said is pretty
much the way I felt when working with it. If things have changed
recently, then it's for the best.

Tim Bradshaw

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
* Xah wrote:
>> "David J. Cooper" wrote:
>>> [...] really strange
>>> stuff like var++ (what's that??)

> Robert Monfera <mon...@fisec.com> wrote
>> Postfix.

> shut your pie-hole if you don't know what you are talking about.

Do you claim that I++ is not postfix? A remarkable claim, I think.

--tim

Xah

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
: Martin Rodgers
> Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

Don't speak for yourself, Rogers.

>> anyone know Haskell better please extend.
>
> I recommend comp.lang.functional,

and i recommend the Haskell _mailing list_ found in the Haskell language
site.

if we have experts on Haskell syntax here, i'm interested in a live account.
I'm quite capable of reading the Haskell language spec otherwise.

> where they have extensive knowledge
> of Haskell, Haskell compilers, and Haskell applications. They're also
> very realistic about the current state of the language. Not only will
> all your questions be answered there (if they can't answer, who can?),
> your reception _may_ be a little friendlier.
>
> After all, it's not polite to compare a language with 40 years of
> maturity with a language that has only 10 years. Imagine if you
> compared women like that? Hmm, human languages? "English is spoken by
> more people than French, so why hasn't English replaced French?" Ask a
> few French nationalists. I doubt their replies will be at all polite!

I was misunderstood by you. I did not come here to do such comparison and i
did not seek petting replies, but informative or qualitative ones in one way
or another. Every geek in fact loves a good flame war that's devoid of
vacuous babble. The most common worst type are those "you're now in my
killfile" drivel. The common people should start to think about how to rate
the value of a message. Is it how much politeness it imparts? Is it how many
words it contains? Is it purely its relevancy? (and how do you judge
relevancy?) or is it the rarity of technical info or quality of an opinion
expressed? In face to face situations, politeness prevails for many reasons.
In writings, quality of content prevails. I do shameless pretend to be
giving a lesson here to the general public, in the absence of doctor Naggum.

> I gave up on the prefix/infix/postfix debate a few decades ago.

It is good to know, truly. As you intend it, many of us are not qualified to
say we were born few decades ago. Age & experience is not the criterion but
is not to be ignored.

> Followup adjusted.

Bad behavior. I sent an inappropriate reply to that group by mistake as a
result of this. You are not the director of this group, eh? I can post in
comp.lang.functional if i wanted to.

with all due respects, (^_~)

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> wrote:
> Do you claim that I++ is not postfix? A remarkable claim, I think.

my claims are often remarkable, especially in the right context.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Janos Blazi

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
I have read that article. I do not quite understand the criteria chosen. It
seems he does not consider speed and he does not consider stability problems
that may arise from the reference counting either.

Clearly Python is a much less sophistacated language that Python and this
has many advanteges. So Python must win if the strong sides of Lisp are not
appreciated.

Janos Blazi

Marco Antoniotti <mar...@parades.rm.cnr.it> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
lw900d6...@parades.rm.cnr.it...


>
> This preamble is for Erik Naggum! DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT READ THE
> FOLLOWING LINK!
>

> Everybody else, read at your own risk. :)
>

> http://www.strout.net/python/pythonvslisp.html


>
> Cheers
>
> --
> Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
> PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
> tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
> http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa

Janos Blazi

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Having tried to follow this thread for a while now, I have to ask: What are you
on about? Is english your first language? Given an average level of typos it is
usually possible to work out what is being said. But your level of grammatical
and structural errors fundamentally obscure the content of your postings.

Cheers

:) will


Tim Bradshaw

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
* Xah wrote:
> Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> wrote:
>> Do you claim that I++ is not postfix? A remarkable claim, I think.

> my claims are often remarkable, especially in the right context.

Not to mention wrong, of course.


Dorai Sitaram

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <38B292C0...@pindar.com>,

Xah seems to break rules (consciously or not)
the way an artist breaks rules. The result is very
cheerful and liberating, and often quite beautiful.

--d

Martin Rodgers

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

> > I recommend comp.lang.functional,


>
> and i recommend the Haskell _mailing list_ found in the Haskell language
> site.

Indeed, you'll find many people who are busy working on Haskell
standards and compilers.

> if we have experts on Haskell syntax here, i'm interested in a live account.
> I'm quite capable of reading the Haskell language spec otherwise.

It's rather pointless discussing the syntax of non-Lisp languages in a
Lisp ng. We're here because we prefer the _Lisp_ syntax. deja.com will
provide many excellent posts on the subject which will explain why.

> I was misunderstood by you. I did not come here to do such comparison and i
> did not seek petting replies, but informative or qualitative ones in one way
> or another.

"Petting"? What does that mean?

The earlier thread subject was "why Haskell hasn't "replaced CL yet?",
which is a very silly question, but it still deserves an answer. My
answer (I don't claim it to be unique or original) is that you can
find the answers in comp.lang.functional, where the use of compilers
for the language has been discussed already. ISTR that the concensus
is that after 10 years, Haskell is still an area of research and will
continue to be for some time yet. However, you should check this for
yourself, using the deja.com search engine.

I like Haskell. I like Lisp. I like a lot of things, but I don't see
any of them as mutually exclusive.

> Every geek in fact loves a good flame war that's devoid of
> vacuous babble.

One geek's cogent argument is another geek's vacuous babble. I'm
offering little more than the views of the people closest to Haskell
itself. See my comments about deja.com above.

> > I gave up on the prefix/infix/postfix debate a few decades ago.
>
> It is good to know, truly. As you intend it, many of us are not qualified to
> say we were born few decades ago. Age & experience is not the criterion but
> is not to be ignored.

It has nothing to do with age; I was a teenager at the time. While
others were arguing over the semicolon issue, I was discovering prefix
and postfix notations, and writing code that writes code. But then, I
have an unusually high aptitude for abstractions.

> > Followup adjusted.

An old UseNet convention.



> Bad behavior. I sent an inappropriate reply to that group by mistake as a
> result of this. You are not the director of this group, eh? I can post in
> comp.lang.functional if i wanted to.

I suggest that you do so, for the reasons given above. It'll save you
a lot of wasted effort. Investigation will reveal a false assumption
that the users of one language give a damn about the opinions of the
users of another language. E.g. Kent Pitman's views on Scheme and his
wise refusal to debate them. You may also observe a tendency for
language wars to end with a reference to Cobol. At the very least
you'll see how effectively Lisp users respond to attacks from users of
other languages. Experience helps considerably. So does being right.

So, I predict that you'll accomplish nothing positive with this
thread. You've already created a netagive impression. I remember you
from a few years ago, and the impression then was much more positive.

BTW, I think the word you're looking for is 'moderator', and it
doesn't apply here. I can set the followups in my posts as I see fit.
If you fail to honour them, that's entirely your choice.

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Dorai wrote:

> Xah seems to break rules (consciously or not) the way an artist breaks rules. The
> result is very cheerful and liberating, and often quite beautiful.

Ah, so Xah is posting *art* as technical discussion! It all becomes clear why it
makes no sense.

Thanks for clearing that up,

:) will

Arthur Lemmens

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

Janos Blazi wrote:

> If I may ask you: Which CL implementation are you using?

Lispworks for Windows 4.1.

> Are you using only one CL implementation?

For real work: yes.

Arthur

Harley Davis

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote in message news:B4D55152.5E11%x...@xahlee.org...
> your actions speak better than your words.

How do you distinguish actions and words on a newsgroup?

-- Harley

Bruce Tobin

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

"Scott E. Fahlman" <s...@cs.cmu.edu> wrote
>
> Well, I haven't used Python myself. By reputation, it's kind of an

> ugly and awkward design, but has a lot of built-in functionality that
> makes it easy to do certain kinds of tasks with little effort.

Perhaps you're confusing Python and Perl?

Dorai Sitaram

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to
In article <38b2f77d$0$2...@newsreader.alink.net>,

I am not Xah (at least I'm not admitting it yet) but
the quoted sentence is very acceptable shorthand for

"Your [usually poor] speech acts (= actions) speak
better than your [usually glowing] descriptions (=
words) of your speech acts."

I wouldn't at all agonize about the self-description
itself being a speech act. Heck, a speech act can
function as its own underminer, as happens often
here. That's language.

--d

Harley Davis

unread,
Feb 22, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/22/00
to

Xah <x...@xahlee.org> wrote in message news:B4D7C143.6141%x...@xahlee.org...

> Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> wrote:
> > Do you claim that I++ is not postfix? A remarkable claim, I think.
>
> my claims are often remarkable, especially in the right context.

Remarkably ignorant, in this case.

-- Harley

Christopher Browne

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Hartmann Schaffer would say:
>In article <CzOxOBcu4FxVfRy8=W26DF...@4ax.com>,
> Paolo Amoroso <amo...@mclink.it> writes:
>> ...
>> Lambda Codex
>> https://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=2041
>
>page not found

<http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=2041> seems to work.
--
Minds, like parachutes, only function when they are open.
cbbr...@hex.net- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Dorai wrote:

> I wouldn't at all agonize about the self-description itself being a speech
> act. Heck, a speech act can function as its own underminer, as happens often
> here. That's language.

He ho. Is this this art too? it doesn't mean anything otherwise.

Cheers,

:) will

ps: It would help if you could indicate art on the newsgroup, maybe through the
use of an art tag. Something like <art>some art here</art> would be
appreciated. Thanks in advance ;) will


Espen Vestre

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
William Deakin <wi...@pindar.com> writes:

> It all becomes clear why it makes no sense.

well, I'm still convinced that we witness an interesting experiment
in Computational Lingusitics ;-)

--
(espen)

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Espen wrote:

> ...I'm still convinced that we witness an interesting experiment in
> Computational Lingusitics ;-)

If so, IMHO whoever is behind this has passed the Turing test. I admit
that I am unable to distiguish between the computer and human generated
*art* [1]

Best Regards,

:) will

[1] or is that gibberish? ;)


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
xah wrote:
>> I was misunderstood by you. I did not come here to do such comparison and i
>> did not seek petting replies, but informative or qualitative ones in one way
>> or another.

Martin Rodgers wrote:
> "Petting"? What does that mean?

Allow me to break it to you gently. Bring out your Oxford English Dict. Turn
to the right page and peruse the fine print. Now read my message again. If
you detect a collusion of logicality, then throw logic into the trashcan and
grok. Shakespeare grokked human Sense and Sensibility, that's why he is
appreciated by those sensible. If you can grok me, then you'll be equally
appreciated by me too.

When i open a book by Emily Dickinson, it is all greeks to me. Only when i
toil with persistence that i possibly get a glimpse of a rainbow. Pretend
i'm Emily.

(In general, it is hard to be appreciated until one is dead.)

Martin:


> It has nothing to do with age; I was a teenager at the time. While
> others were arguing over the semicolon issue, I was discovering prefix
> and postfix notations, and writing code that writes code. But then, I
> have an unusually high aptitude for abstractions.

Translation: "Actually i am quite a handsome _young_ fellow; When i was a
teen, everyone else is really stupid. But then, i'm a genius after all."

Martin:


> So, I predict that you'll accomplish nothing positive with this
> thread.

On the contrary, i've accomplished quite a lot _already_. I have gotten
exactly the opinions i sought from a few CL experts, albeit i have yet to
hear from someone who really have _mastery_ of both CL and one of
Dylan/Haskell (Scott E. Fahlman being a possible exception. Such people are
very rare, after all. Lucky me if they read newsgroups at all.).

As a side effect, i've also pushed my respectfulness (literally or
satirically) into two diametric extremes. If you are a priest, you cannot be
a gigolo; if you are a gigolo, you cannot be a priest. Albeit there are a
lot people do church by day and brothel by night. (please don't get all
offended. It's just a meaningless figure of speech.)

Martin:
>>> Followup adjusted.

Xah
>> ... You are not the director of this group, eh? I can post in


>> comp.lang.functional if i wanted to.

Martin:
> ... BTW, I think the word you're looking for is 'moderator', and it


> doesn't apply here. I can set the followups in my posts as I see fit.
> If you fail to honour them, that's entirely your choice.

'moderator' vs. 'director'? What is their difference? Can you please explain
to me?

Frankly Rodgers, your crime is the heedlessness of other's intelligence. You
need to pay attention to detail and get a drift. But if you are playing with
me, then you need to wipe your deadpan face and give us a good laugh. Like i
said to Rainer, don't ruin a fine troll with banal noise. I knew about my
information resources and FAQs well. Don't chant in the ways of "the right
tool for the right job" or "Haskell is a 10-years old research language". If
you don't have information other than for clueless newbies, you can shut up
your beer-hole too. Don't pretend to be tall in a foreign field.

Martin:


> I remember you
> from a few years ago, and the impression then was much more positive.

For old time's sake, are we still friends?

PS
while i was doing research in answering another poster's reply, i found this
trickle of relevance:
http://www.deja.com/article/499362270
think of it as a gift from me.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
i wrote:
> your actions speak better than your words.

"Harley Davis" <nospam...@nospam.museprime.com> wrote:
> How do you distinguish actions and words on a newsgroup?

let me spell it out for you:

words:
Don't add noise to our newsgroup.
You are probably a stupid troll.
Get out before I killfile you.

action: the learned:
Ok, you troll,
here's what i think about Dylan,
from a CL programer points of view...

action: the jester:
I know a monger named Wall
who always peddles his Perl
if he had any grasp
he would just lisp
Wall is nothing but just a troll

action: the wise:


Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
will <wi...@pindar.com> wrote:
> ps: It would help if you could indicate art on the newsgroup,
> maybe through the
> use of an art tag. Something like <art>some art here</art> would be
> appreciated. Thanks in advance ;) will

<art>will you shut your willful mouth?</art>

thank you.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


William Deakin

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Xah wrote:

> <art>will you shut your willful mouth?</art>

At last a sentence that can be understood. Well, I think I have understood
this sentence. Thank you.

To the author of the Xah Turing machine, I must commend you on it's
sophistication. Is it written in Haskell or CL? (or the scripting language
that comes with Mathematica, perhaps?) I would be very grateful if you
would make the source code available to public consumption.

Best Regards,

:) will


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Marco Antoniotti <mar...@parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote

> As per the comment about language design choices, I'll have to dig out
> old notes about "local" variable handling and so forth.

I surmise your are talking about that Mathematica does not have a lexically
scoped local variable. i.e. it's Block[] construct is dynamically scoped.

Mathematica had a Module[] and With[] constructs since at least v.2 back in
before 1993. Module is like Block except it's lexically scoped. With[] is
for local constants. As i recall, it's Scheme's several versions of 'let'
(except Scheme does not have dynamically scoped local variable by design, as
everyone here knew.) For those curious, here's an example of syntax:
Module[
List[ var1, var2, ..., Set[var9, val1], ...],
CompoundExpression[ f[...], ...]
]

You might be talking about v.1, which is in the late 80s. As far as i know,
Richard J. Fateman (http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/) was very critical
of Mathematica and especially of this. He happened to have told me that
Wolfram people added Module because of his criticisms.

Btw, this site might be of interest to people here
http://members.aol.com/jeff570/mathsym.html
(earliest use of math symbols)

The design of mathematical notation and its meanings is a fascinating and an
unsolved subject in logician and philosopher's homes. (hand waving
explanation goes here)

I like Haskell foremost because it has two properties: no side effects
(purely functional), and lazy evaluation (non-strict).

Purely functional languages essentially intends to become a piece of live
mathematics. It's syntax/semantics are often called denotational semantics.
This is so because in such functional purity the code really looks like or
actually represent mathematical notations and equations, but with the
property being alive.

Pure perfection makes me giddy with elation. I envision a utopia of Borg
technology, where all software has no bugs, maintain themselves, improve
themselves, and in every other way just perfect. This pipe dream will begin
to happen only when languages _like_ Haskell takes rein of the world.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
William Deakin <wi...@pindar.com> wrote

>Is english your first language?

My first language is body language. Have you not learned it? No wonder you
don't communicate well.

Cheerfully,

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


William Deakin

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Xah wrote:

> My first language is body language. Have you not learned it? No wonder you
> don't communicate well.

Excellent, I think that makes half-a-dozen sentences I think I have
understood! Anyway, since you understand me, but *I* was the one experiencing
problems understanding *you*, surely it is *you* that doesn't communicate
well. That is, unless we are operating the standard usenet `you don't
understand what I say, so you are at fault' protocol. Just let me know.
`Soonest done, soonest mended.'

Anyway, keep up the good work,

:) will

ps: It may help clear up our little difficulties if you could send
instructions for encoding body language for newsgroup posting.


Martin Rodgers

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

> Translation: "Actually i am quite a handsome _young_ fellow; When i was a


> teen, everyone else is really stupid. But then, i'm a genius after all."

Completely wrong. You're using an outdated model (i.e. linear) of
intelligence. This is why experts on measuring I.Q. refuse to give
their own I.Q. - they don't consider it meaningful.

I said that I have an unusually high aptitude for abstractions. I
expect that this is true of Lisp programmers in general. I'd say the
same for users of FP and LP languages, but for slightly different
reasons.

My point was that age has little to do with it.



> On the contrary, i've accomplished quite a lot _already_.

That's debatable.

> (please don't get all offended. It's just a meaningless figure of speech.)

I hope you'll accept my scepticism in the same spirit.
--
Email address intentially munged | You can never browse enough
will write code that writes code that writes code for food

Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Dear will & readers,

William Deakin <wi...@pindar.com> wrote:
> ps: It may help clear up our little difficulties if you could send
> instructions for encoding body language for newsgroup posting.

It's all in standard collegiate dictionaries & writing guides.

For those precocious, more detail in intro to linguistics. For the advanced:
Introduction to Mathematical Logic. For the serious geniuses such as members
of the Naggum club: read Xah's opuses.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


William Deakin

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Xah wrote:

> Will wrote:
> > ps: It may help clear up our little difficulties if you could send
> > instructions for encoding body language for newsgroup posting.
>
> It's all in standard collegiate dictionaries & writing guides.

Obviously my mistake. However, not having the benefit of your clearly superior
education, I am at a loss. This also must be a geographical issue in-as-much-as
I am unaware of any college in the UK (or Europe for that matter) that supplies
these guides. Can you name a title or author so that I could buy such a guide
from Amazon?

Anyway, my hat goes off to the programmer who wrote the AI-that-is-Xah. Any
program that can interpret more than just text and analyse speech and body
language too is clearly uber rather that unter.

This is getting more William Gibson every moment...

Happy parsing,

:) will


Xah

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Martin Rodgers <m...@thiswildcardaddressintentiallyleftmunged.demon.co.uk>
wrote

> Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

Except the echoes, Martin.

Xah:


>> (please don't get all offended. It's just a meaningless figure of speech.)

Martin:


> I hope you'll accept my scepticism in the same spirit.

There's nothing quite like finding a companion of mind.
According to that alt.troll article, he calls it thoughtstream. It's been
ecstatic reeling in it.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Janos Blazi

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to

William Deakin <wi...@pindar.com> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
38B3E43E...@pindar.com...

Simply out of curiousity (English is not my native tongue): Is

"I would be very grateful if you would make ..."

(instead of "I would be very grateful if you made ...")
good English?

Janos Blazi


-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----

Martin Rodgers

unread,
Feb 23, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/23/00
to
Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Xah?

> It's been ecstatic reeling in it.

Remember my advise about comp.lang.functional.

William Deakin

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Janos wrote:

> Will schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:


> > I would be very grateful if you would make the source code available to
> public consumption.
>

> Simply out of curiousity (English is not my native tongue): Is "I would be
> very grateful if you would make ..." (instead of "I would be very grateful if
> you made ...") good English?

For this I will make no reference to any form of higher power, but AFAIAA both
"I would be very grateful if you would make" and "I would be very grateful if
you made" are acceptable in common usage. I think they are kosher at a formal
level not just down to my `colloquial' (or is that plain sloppy?) use of
english.

I look forward to being corrected by a language lawyer.

:) will


Xah

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
William Deakin <wi...@pindar.com> wrote:
> I look forward to being corrected by a language lawyer.

Language lawyer don't mean shit.

In scientific disciplines, there are usually strict yard sticks of value.
One cannot exalt her respectability simply by charisma or politics. "You are
what you publish, and what you publish are checked by equations and
experiments". Here the term scientific disciplines broadly and sloppily
includes any hard sciences or fields based on hard sciences such as
engineering or doctoring and nursing.

In non-scientific disciplines, the landscape changes. You can be a moron and
still lead a nation. Extreme examples are occupations of occultism. (e.g.
astrology, numerology, palmistry, tarot, i-ching, ... ad nauseam.) Take
astrology as an example for illustration. First i'll show you how to master
it. First, you can buy all the astrology books you may find in your local
book store of New Age section. It'll only take you a few months to read them
all. Then, you can go to big university libraries and search for books
related to astrology. This is now a more difficult task. There are a fairly
wide spectrum on the kind of books on astrology. For example, astrology
debunking, astrology history, history of astronomy, astronomy, cosmology,
biographies, research journals ... etc. (it's interesting to note that here
its very hard to find astrology how-to books.) Depending what kind of
mastery you want to obtain, it may take a year to a life time learning
experience. At this stage, it's not merely just reading books on astrology,
you also are learning or needs to learn quite a lot of other skills. Really
depending on how far you want to go, you may need basic skills such as
critical thinking and basic reading/writing to advanced collegiate skills in
history research, mathematics, statistics, or astronomy. All this could take
years. Now, if you are still interested, you need to visit practicing
astrologers. Get your future predicted by them, try to attend interviews,
psychic fairs & events, and even try to become a friend of an astrologer or
two. In short, you need to immerse yourself in the field to learn it's
culture and get experience. If you are a nut case about astrology, and have
the skills, brain, and stamina to go through these stages, then you have
what it takes to master astrology.

Now that you've mastered the non-scientific subject astrology, you may
become two things:

* a knowledgeable practicing astrologer.
* a pissing debunker hated by astrologers and ignored by everyone on earth.

(Note that neither of these professions will earn you a good living, so
don't fancy on that.)

Now that a astrology master can choose to occupy either of these extreme
opposing vocations is an instance of an illustration that the yard stick of
value in non-scientific "disciplines" is totally bendable.

Now back to English...

I was going to say, that writing or English writing falls towards the
humanitarian discipline, not hard-core scientific ones.

To be sure, in English there are also metrics called syntax (for the eye)
and one called grammar (for internal organs). However, they are far from
precise. With all advanced theory of types or lambda calculus or symbolic
logic or homological algebra or what not fear-imposing jargons, there is
to-date no formalism that completely specifies the English syntax/grammar
and never will be.

This does not mean that rubbish is indistinguishable from opus, only that
the distinction takes for a mastery itself.

What one can do in this sorry situation, is basically taking the same
approach in mastering astrology. One can start by going to a local bookstore
and pick up dictionaries and writing guides or one grammar books or two.
(assuming you already speak the language.) As you become comfortable, you
can move on to the university library and read and read and read and go to
newsgroups (like me) and write and write and write. (important: not post and
post and post.) There really is not anything magical like some of the
physics trick where one equation describes the universe. It all depends on
your interest. The more broad and open minded reading you do, the more
solidity in your spewing; the more writing you do, the more precision and
aiming you have at your spewing. (take me for example: when i open my mouth,
black shit of steel spew forthwith at the throats of ignoramuses and
hypocrites.) As i have said in other posts, that if you like to advance your
skill in non-trivial ways, then you might want to venture into the study of
linguistics and symbolic logic as well. Linguistics gives you a generic
overview of why English is so stupid, and symbolic logic just confirms that
in depth. One advise i must dealt out is that you should NOT spend too much
time on the so called English grammar. Use them to help you write acceptable
phrases. But once you can write naturally, screw them like you'd screw your
lover. Go into linguistics, logic, or even poetry mumble jumble instead.
(unless, of course, that you INTEND to become a grammar tutorial writer.)

Language lawyers don't mean shit. Those who insists on bantering split
infinities, tenseness, plurality agreements, or trifling articles can go to
hell. I kick their asses anytime.

Once you have obtained the mastery of writing, there are also two roads you
can hop onto just like astrology:

* a pissing debunker who has little interest in literary writing or its
advocation (sic).

* becoming a literary writer (e.g. poet)
Presumably and unfortunately that's the way went Kent Pitman, Richard P.
Gabriel, Larry Wall, doctor Naggum and undoubtfully other illuminati on
their way to crackpottery.

Again, neither pays.


Thank you.

Xah
x...@xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html


William Deakin

unread,
Feb 24, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/24/00
to
Xah wrote:

> Will wrote:
> > I look forward to being corrected by a language lawyer.
>
> Language lawyer don't mean shit.

Yup. I agree. I'm amazed. But I agree.

> Thank you.

In the words of The King `Ah, thaankk u ver i much, ah' too,

:) will


Jeff Dalton

unread,
Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to
s...@cs.cmu.edu (Scott E. Fahlman) writes:

> CL and Dylan are in slightly different parts of the design space. CL
> offers great runtime flexibility, but at the cost of carrying around
> substantial parts of its program development environment at runtime --
> rather like a tortoise carrying its house around. "Delivery modes"
> that produce compact CL applications arrived late in the game and are
> only a partial solution.

That's a standard point, but I think it's somewhat misleading.

Nothing (except lack of time and other resources) stops CL
implementors from doing things in a way more like Dylan's. It would
be implementation-specific (declarations or whatever), but so are the
"delivery modes".

Now, what is the "development env" that has to be carried around?
TRACE and STEP, probably the compiler. Some include the mere ability
to redefine things as "development env". There are some efficiency
costs, chiefly an indirection on function calls to allow the functions
to be redefined; and there's the space taken up by the compiler.
TRACE and STEP are tiny. But in any case, TRACE, STEP, and the
compiler can be "autoloaded" so that they're not there until something
tries to use them. (Autoloading has been around for decades.
Nowadays shared libraries or some other technique might be used).

Of course, some implementations might have substantially more
"development env" built-in with no good way to exclude it. But that's
a problem with those implementations, not with Common Lisp.

-- jd


Tunc Simsek

unread,
Feb 25, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/25/00
to

On 25 Feb 2000, Jeff Dalton wrote:

> s...@cs.cmu.edu (Scott E. Fahlman) writes:
>
> > CL and Dylan are in slightly different parts of the design space. CL
> > offers great runtime flexibility, but at the cost of carrying around
> > substantial parts of its program development environment at runtime --
> > rather like a tortoise carrying its house around. "Delivery modes"
> > that produce compact CL applications arrived late in the game and are
> > only a partial solution.

Regarding this point, I was asked the following question: "how small of
an executable can you get from a CL program that simply prints HELLO WORLD
at the term".

I don't know the answer, infact I don't even know how to produce an
executable from a Lisp program, I never had any need for it.

Thanks,
Tunc


Erik Naggum

unread,
Feb 26, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/26/00
to
* Tunc Simsek <sim...@paleale.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>

| Regarding this point, I was asked the following question: "how small of
| an executable can you get from a CL program that simply prints HELLO WORLD
| at the term".

note that "how small an executable" actually means "how much do the
operating system and the executable agree on". e.g., in the case of C
programs under Unix, so much that the executable can effectively be a few
hundred bytes, as the shared libraries that are involved and the
initialization code for the program are, after all, what the entire
operating system is optimized for. this does not mean the memory
footprint of the executable when loaded into memory will be small, or
that it won't do a lot of work behind the scenes.

| I don't know the answer, infact I don't even know how to produce an
| executable from a Lisp program, I never had any need for it.

exactly. therefore, the smallest "executable Common Lisp program" that
does the same meaningless task as the typical "hello, world" demo that
shows off how functions and interactive invocation work under Unix, is
either simply the string "hello, world" typed to a listener (and what's
the sport in that?) or (defun hello () "hello, world") which is almost as
unchallenging.

what we have to realize and counter with is that building lots of tiny
little programs in C is a very inefficient way to build an interactive
environment. think of all the programs and scripts and whatnot as small
functions that can pass values around only as textual strings in pipes at
best. each program is ephemeral and must use the disk for its variables
or state if it has any, or it must receive environment variables and
options each time and the state is maintained in the caller. each
program is run by loading and dynamically linking a *huge* amount of
stuff every time. in contrast, a Common Lisp system got all of this
interactive development environment stuff _right_, with very much simpler
and faster function invocation once you start it up, but you also have to
start up a shell to start you hello program. so why focus on the size of
the "executable". refocus on the amount of work involved and how having
to use an executable on disk for such a trivial behavior is really not a
good thing to begin with.

#:Erik

Reini Urban

unread,
Feb 27, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/27/00
to
Tunc Simsek wrote:
>On 25 Feb 2000, Jeff Dalton wrote:
>> s...@cs.cmu.edu (Scott E. Fahlman) writes:
>> > CL and Dylan are in slightly different parts of the design space. CL
>> > offers great runtime flexibility, but at the cost of carrying around
>> > substantial parts of its program development environment at runtime --
>> > rather like a tortoise carrying its house around. "Delivery modes"
>> > that produce compact CL applications arrived late in the game and are
>> > only a partial solution.
>
>Regarding this point, I was asked the following question: "how small of
>an executable can you get from a CL program that simply prints HELLO WORLD
>at the term".
>
>I don't know the answer, infact I don't even know how to produce an
>executable from a Lisp program, I never had any need for it.

gail anderson from the edinburgh university presented at the berkeley
conference a very rich ACL application which fits onto a 1.4MB floppy.

it is a layout generator, has an interpreter for an internal geometric
rule language, is production quality, with graphical interface, produces
the yellow papers for the british telephone books. (sorry, lost the link
to the webpage)

what else do you want?
--
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html

Tunc Simsek

unread,
Feb 27, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/27/00
to

Good example, thanks. I'd also be interseted in learning how small
executables are produced (for example in ACL or CMUCL).

Tim Bradshaw

unread,
Feb 27, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/27/00
to
* Tunc Simsek wrote:

> Good example, thanks. I'd also be interseted in learning how small
> executables are produced (for example in ACL or CMUCL).

I believe that the layout app was done just using using whatever tool
acl (this was the PC acl 3.x) used for dumping images. We will try
and put the paper up for www access in the next week or so (it is
probably available elsewhere but I don't remember where).

In general I don't really understand the stress on tiny applications
-- I mean my *calculator* has more than 1Mb of memory, and memory is
*so* cheap. And any substantial difference in size between Lisp and
C/Java/C++/blah is only going to exist for really small applications
anyway. Any SW you sell will likely be on a CDROM and really you have
enough space on one of those for a lisp image.

The place where I can see it mattering is applications which are
delivered on-the-fly over the network into a browser or something.
But that battle has been won for us -- everyone *knows* you need the
java VM to run java you fetch, or the flash plugin to do shockwave or
whatever (cause netscape to freeze in my case). So it's only
reasonable that you should need the lisp plugin to run fasls you
fetch. And .fasl files are easily competitive with random .o files
per unit of functionality.

So I'd like to turn this around: why does anyone *care* about a
sub-1Mb standalone application any more?

--tim

Michael Schuerig

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
Reini Urban <rur...@x-ray.at> wrote:

> Tunc Simsek wrote:

> >Regarding this point, I was asked the following question: "how small of
> >an executable can you get from a CL program that simply prints HELLO WORLD
> >at the term".

> gail anderson from the edinburgh university presented at the berkeley


> conference a very rich ACL application which fits onto a 1.4MB floppy.

[snip]

> what else do you want?

Ability to create a small executable that runs on any of the major Linux
distributions out of the box.

Yes, I realize that this isn't fair at all. Using Perl, for instance,
requires installing a massive amount of supporting software, too, and
no-one complains. Nowadays, on a Unix/Linux system, one more or less
expects the availability of Perl, Python, Tcl beside C.

The trick seems to be to create applications that make installing the
required runtime support seem worthwhile to a lot of people.

Michael

--
Michael Schuerig
mailto:schu...@acm.org
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/

not.fo...@not.for.spam

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
On 26 Feb 2000 03:12:23 +0000, Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> wrote:

> note that "how small an executable" actually means "how much do the
> operating system and the executable agree on". e.g., in the case of C

Compatibility is as important as functionality.

> exactly. therefore, the smallest "executable Common Lisp program" that
> does the same meaningless task as the typical "hello, world" demo that

It's not meaningless. The purpose is to show that you can deliver
an application. By making the application as trivial as possible, you
separate the issue of whether you can deliver anything, from the
issue of how complicated a program it might be.

When you deliver an application, you have to take into account that
the users might not have access to your Lisp environment. You also
have to take into account that they might want the application delivered
to their email inboxes, and that they might have a limit on the size of an
incoming message.

> what we have to realize and counter with is that building lots of tiny
> little programs in C is a very inefficient way to build an interactive

We have to be compatible with programs from other vendors, and such
programs tend to work together using well-known interfaces. One of the
most common of those interfaces is the "pipes and filters" interface. So
it's not feasible to just write that interface off as being too inefficient.

As another example, suppose I'm a naive user who uses your program
from my text-editor, invoking it with a filter-region command, to capture
its output in my edit buffer. If I know someone else who has the same
program written in C++, and I've noticed that they can do the filter-region
thing in a tiny fraction of a second, but I always have to wait almost a full
second, I might start to envy them, and wish mine were written in C++
instead of Lisp.

In the real world, we have to keep the users happy. We can't expect
them to bend over backwards to be compatible with us. We have to
deliver what they want, and make them see high quality in what we
deliver. We have to understand their point of view and make the quality
high from their point of view.

Lisp has a lot of advantages and some disadvantages. To sell Lisp,
we have to show that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We
can't do that by evading questions about the disadvantages. We have
to instead say something like, "yes, a Lisp program does take 750 ms
to start running, but here are the ways you can mitigate that, and here
are the advantages you get for tolerating that."

If we evade the question, the users will assume the worst. They want
to be sure the program will always start running within a certain number
of seconds, and that the smallest program will be below a certain
number of megabytes. If we evade those questions, they will assume
the answers are bad news, and probably won't have time to give Lisp
any further consideration as they go down their long list of possible
development languages and environments for their next project.


Erik Naggum

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
* not.fo...@not.for.spam

| When you deliver an application, you have to take into account that the
| users might not have access to your Lisp environment.

well, this is the meaningless part. when people deliver applications,
they take for granted that you already have the relevant portions of the
environment the application needs in the shape of DLLs (or other forms of
shared libraries and resources) to make it run. if you don't, you're
expected to download it, or in the worst case, get the application with a
bunch of such libraries.

therefore, the question is: what's considered the application? the DLLs
and the whole shebang or _just_ the executable? in my view, it doesn't
make sense to separate them (neither in the case of C nor CL), but in the
minds of people who compare sizes of executables, the DLLs are somehow
irrelevant, but if they are made aware of them for some languages, like
some not-so-helpful Lisp people seem to force them into, they will also
count the runtime system. this is a very bad move. don't call attention
to these things, and they'll never notice them the exact same way they
never notice the multimegabyte DLLs they install for other packages.

| You also have to take into account that they might want the application
| delivered to their email inboxes, and that they might have a limit on the
| size of an incoming message.

sorry to say so, but this is a specious argument at best. people need to
install some form of runtime system library _once_, and can thereafter
accept any small "executable" = application. this is not a big deal.
what's necessary to ship for Common Lisp programs is usually much smaller
than you need to ship for other languages once you're past this point.

| As another example, suppose I'm a naive user who uses your program from
| my text-editor, invoking it with a filter-region command, to capture its
| output in my edit buffer. If I know someone else who has the same
| program written in C++, and I've noticed that they can do the
| filter-region thing in a tiny fraction of a second, but I always have to
| wait almost a full second, I might start to envy them, and wish mine were
| written in C++ instead of Lisp.

this would have been a useful piece of input if it were true. it isn't.
that is, it used to be true 20 years ago, and today it's stale myth.

| In the real world, we have to keep the users happy.

well, in the mythical world, the users aren't happy. in the real world,
they don't care what language is used as long as they get what they want,
and users put up with a _lot_ of compromises. speed is no longer an
issue, since the hardware new stuff is being deployed on is really fast.
(just trust me on this if you don't believe it.)

| We have to instead say something like, "yes, a Lisp program does take 750
| ms to start running, but here are the ways you can mitigate that, and
| here are the advantages you get for tolerating that."

do tell me just _why_ do we have to lie? this is so blatantly stupid I
get _sick_. on my system, the default Allegro CL starts up in about 20
ms and with one my applications which has a lot of startup-time
compucation, it takes about 35 ms on a bad day.

| If we evade the question, the users will assume the worst.

and some will think _we're_ lying when we tell them that the startup-time
of a C++ program (and certainly a Java program) is longer than that of a
full-blown Common Lisp system. do you know how we can deal with that,
considering your strong desire to perpetuate old myths?

you're welcome to the real world any time, but if you have nothing more
to contribute than trite old myths, you're part of the problem of the
mythical world Lisp _still_ has to fight, not part of any solution in the
real world.

#:Erik

Erik Naggum

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
* Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com>

| So I'd like to turn this around: why does anyone *care* about a sub-1Mb
| standalone application any more?

that's simple, Tim: because they want to keep their myths alive and well.
"Lisp is big and slow" is not a fact, it's a religious belief. you can't
turn people's religions around with facts. if people deep down trust
that this is the reason Lisp doesn't win, they'll return to it every time
Lisp doesn't win, true or not, supported by evidence or not -- it's just
how they "feel", anyway.

most people have only one _real_ desire in their life: to feel safe in
the correctness of their beliefs. the only way to make this happen is to
hand them something obviously better and correct to believe in while you
burn down whatever it was they considered safe thoroughly.

consider this a theory of the ecology of ideas, where the winning ideas
are like predators sneaking up on whoever feels smugly safe. there will
be a lot of screaming and shouting while the stale ideas are killed and
their proponents act like scared monkeys, but afterwards, you won't have
a problem with stale ideas resurfacing. sadly, the Lisp community has
not been willing to kill off the idiotic ideas with sufficient force, and
when I try, a whole bunch of monkeys scream so much it's time to call the
Discovery Channel crew and film them.

#:Erik

Tim Bradshaw

unread,
Feb 28, 2000, 3:00:00 AM2/28/00
to
* not for email wrote:

> Lisp has a lot of advantages and some disadvantages. To sell Lisp,
> we have to show that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We

> can't do that by evading questions about the disadvantages. We have


> to instead say something like, "yes, a Lisp program does take 750 ms
> to start running, but here are the ways you can mitigate that, and here
> are the advantages you get for tolerating that."

Look, once and for all, let's get rid of this stupid bloody myth about
startup times. We've been through this *recently* here, so I'll just
quote the figures I produced last time through:

On a 333MHz ultrasparc with enough memory, gcl 2.3 is around 0.03
secs to run a null program

clisp (recent version) seems to be about 0.08

cmucl seems to be about 0.2

Your figures are out by more than a factor of 25 for gcl, almost 10
for clisp, a mere 4 for cmucl. On a slow machine even. Gcl is about
as fast as perl to start.

Yes I *know* lisps were way slow to start 15 years ago on vaxen, I was
there. But that was then and this is now.

--tim

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