What's the deal with GUILE, GCL, and Emacs-lisp?
Charles Fox
So GNU is going to re-implement all its software to use GUILE Schele
as a kinf of 'GNU Visial Basic' macro language.
Does that mean I should give up learning Emacs Lisp and learn Scheme
-- will Emacs eventually also use Scheme instead of Emacs-lip?
And is GUILE a 'real' language, eg. capable of doing fast, big, AI
systems; or is it just a slow scripting language?
Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
What is 'the' lisp to use these days?
Kalle Olavi Niemitalo
> Does that mean I should give up learning Emacs Lisp and learn Scheme
> -- will Emacs eventually also use Scheme instead of Emacs-lip?
That has been the plan. However, I don't think there is
currently any progress being made on that front. Also, because
rewriting all existing Emacs Lisp libraries in Scheme would be
too much work, Emacs will continue to support Emacs Lisp.
Therefore, if you want to extend Emacs, you should keep learning
Emacs Lisp. For standalone programs however, better languages
are available.
> And is GUILE a 'real' language, eg. capable of doing fast, big, AI
> systems; or is it just a slow scripting language?
I haven't been following GUILE lately, but when I checked a few
years ago, it did not have a native compiler.
> Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
If your other options are Emacs Lisp and GUILE, then yes.
Trent Buck
> I am new to this, and confused....
>
> as a kind of 'GNU Visual Basic' macro language.
That was, I think, the plan.
> Does that mean I should give up learning Emacs Lisp and learn Scheme
> -- will Emacs eventually also use Scheme instead of Emacs-lip?
Not in the forseeable future. Of course, there are emacs-alikes like
Hemlock (Common Lisp) and Edwin (MIT Scheme).
> And is GUILE a 'real' language, eg. capable of doing fast, big, AI
> systems; or is it just a slow scripting language?
Guile is Scheme. Scheme is a dialect of Lisp with a core design goal of
simplicity. It is well suited as an extension language where the lack
of libraries is not an issue.
> Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
Certainly Common Lisp has better support for application programming
than Scheme.
--
Trent Buck, Student Errant
The wonderful thing about not planning, is that failure comes as a
complete surprise, and is not preceded by a period of worry or
depression. -- Kiltannen
Christopher C. Stacy
> I am new to this, and confused....
>
> So GNU is going to re-implement all its software to use GUILE Schele
> as a kinf of 'GNU Visial Basic' macro language.
>
> Does that mean I should give up learning Emacs Lisp and learn Scheme
> -- will Emacs eventually also use Scheme instead of Emacs-lip?
Emacs Lisp will probably take you about two hours to learn,
so I would not be concerned with the time investment.
A language like Common Lisp will take much longer to become fluent
in, although you can start writing programs pretty quickly.
I don't know anything about Guile.
> Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
>
> What is 'the' lisp to use these days?
Common Lisp is what most people around here mean when they
say "Lisp". There are lots of extensions out the standard,
and you will have to choose a vendor based on your requirements.
GCL may be a good choice for many purposes, but I don't know
how much development is going on with it. Most of the people
here seem to use the other Lisps. Personally, I mostly use
Lispworks for Windows, and CMUCL under Linux. There are lots
of implementations to select from.
GP lisper
>
> GCL may be a good choice for many purposes, but I don't know
> how much development is going on with it. Most of the people
> here seem to use the other Lisps. Personally, I mostly use
> Lispworks for Windows, and CMUCL under Linux. There are lots
> of implementations to select from.
I've seen a few such comments and I always wonder how people cope with
the impletmentation differences between the two CLs on different
platforms. Wouldn't using a single CL make more sense?
--
Everyman has three hearts;
one to show the world, one to show friends, and one only he knows.
Matthias
> And is GUILE a 'real' language, eg. capable of doing fast, big, AI
> systems; or is it just a slow scripting language?
The last time I looked ad guile (about a year ago) it was a very slow
implementation. If you want to play scheme, look also at bigloo,
chicken scheme, mzscheme (they all come with compilers).
Christopher C. Stacy
> On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 03:13:40 GMT, <cst...@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
> >
> > GCL may be a good choice for many purposes, but I don't know
> > how much development is going on with it. Most of the people
> > here seem to use the other Lisps. Personally, I mostly use
> > Lispworks for Windows, and CMUCL under Linux. There are lots
> > of implementations to select from.
>
> I've seen a few such comments and I always wonder how people cope with
> the impletmentation differences between the two CLs on different
> platforms. Wouldn't using a single CL make more sense?
By using the portability libraries.
Using a single vendor would probably be easier, but ease of use
by the programmer might not always be the only consideration.
Bruce Stephens
[...]
> I've seen a few such comments and I always wonder how people cope
> with the impletmentation differences between the two CLs on
> different platforms. Wouldn't using a single CL make more sense?
My guess is that some people do just use a single implementation (and
in open source projects accept patches for other implementations).
But even if you want to support multiple implementations, the
differences are presumably in limited areas, so you just deal with
those as you would in any language (make your own abstraction
libraries, use portability libraries, etc., just as people do in just
about any language).
GP lisper
Well, I should have been more clear, I'm thinking about the thorny
bits of implementations, such as FFI. While the siren song of SBCL is
loud on #lisp, getting a connection to libpcap is something I need and
positive comments about sbcl and libpcap have been lacking. I
originally thought that clisp was probably the answer, using one of
the CLOS state machines, but perhaps GCL is better. I guess I will
solve the issue by having the GCL side output via a socket that any
other lisp could connect to, in fact your suggested wrapper library
will be best there. <probably too much thinking out loud there>
Camm Maguire
cst...@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
> charle...@hotmail.com (Charles Fox) writes:
>
> > I am new to this, and confused....
> >
> > So GNU is going to re-implement all its software to use GUILE Schele
> > as a kinf of 'GNU Visial Basic' macro language.
> >
> > Does that mean I should give up learning Emacs Lisp and learn Scheme
> > -- will Emacs eventually also use Scheme instead of Emacs-lip?
>
> Emacs Lisp will probably take you about two hours to learn,
> so I would not be concerned with the time investment.
>
> A language like Common Lisp will take much longer to become fluent
> in, although you can start writing programs pretty quickly.
>
> I don't know anything about Guile.
>
>
> > Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
> >
> > What is 'the' lisp to use these days?
>
> Common Lisp is what most people around here mean when they
> say "Lisp". There are lots of extensions out the standard,
> and you will have to choose a vendor based on your requirements.
>
> GCL may be a good choice for many purposes, but I don't know
> how much development is going on with it.
GCL development continues in bursts. We've achieved support of axiom,
maxima and acl2 on all 12 Debian platforms. The version in CVS head
is almost ANSI compliant. We aim for substantial compliance by the
next release, 2.7.0, probably sometime this summer.
Take care,
--
Camm Maguire ca...@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
Hannah Schroeter
Kalle Olavi Niemitalo <k...@iki.fi> wrote:
>[...]
>> And is GUILE a 'real' language, eg. capable of doing fast, big, AI
>> systems; or is it just a slow scripting language?
>I haven't been following GUILE lately, but when I checked a few
>years ago, it did not have a native compiler.
And last time I checked, guile had a slow startup even compared to
other scheme interpreters. So even for scripting I'd not prefer it.
>> Should I stick with GCL lisp for doing real progrmming?
>If your other options are Emacs Lisp and GUILE, then yes.
Or any other good CL implementation. (Or if you want to switch to
Scheme, use another implementation than guile, there *are* quite
efficient scheme implementations too.)
Kind regards,
Hannah.
John Thingstad
check out ECL again.. It's becombing mature :)
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
Hannah Schroeter
John Thingstad <john.th...@chello.no> wrote:
>[...]
>check out ECL again.. It's becombing mature :)
Will it work on OpenBSD without major hacking? Last time I tried,
it didn't, alas. (Though much time ago, it did with only minor hacking.)
Kind regards,
Hannah.
John Thingstad
I'm not the person to ask. Take it up with with the ecl newsgroup..