another Commercial Lisp product - I dumped Java

[Mark Watson]

I am curious if other people have shared my experience:

I started out a few years ago using Common Lisp to
prototype some product ideas, but switched to Java
because I thought that it would support a larger market.

In the last year, I switched back to using Common
Lisp for three reasons:

1. development is much faster
2. runtime performance is much better
3. it is a little harder to de-compile compiled
Lisp than Java, so IP is protected better

For some types of projects, I like Java, but
Lisp is better for many types of projects.

-Mark

PS. I am working on another free web book: "Loving
Lisp, or: the Savy Programmer's Secret Weapon". I
will probably have the first cut done in a few weeks.

-- Mark Watson, author and Java consultant
-- www.markwatson.com - Open Source and Open Content
-- www.knowledgebooks.com - Commercial artificial intelligence software

[Marc Battyani]

"Mark Watson" <ma...@markwatson.com> wrote

> I am curious if other people have shared my experience:
>
> I started out a few years ago using Common Lisp to
> prototype some product ideas, but switched to Java
> because I thought that it would support a larger market.
>
> In the last year, I switched back to using Common
> Lisp for three reasons:
>
> 1. development is much faster
> 2. runtime performance is much better
> 3. it is a little harder to de-compile compiled
> Lisp than Java, so IP is protected better

I've taken a similar path, going from Lisp to C/C++ then to Common Lisp. I
continue to keep an eye on the new stuff like Java/Python but don't see any
advantage to use them.

For me, the more important reasons for Common Lisp are really fast
development, excellent reliability and outstanding maintainability. All that
coming with a good enough performance.

> For some types of projects, I like Java, but
> Lisp is better for many types of projects.

The only stuff I can't do in Lisp is device drivers and what I do in VHDL.

Marc