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From: kend@tekchips.LABS.TEK.COM (Ken Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: why lisp is dead
Message-ID: <5951@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 9 Apr 90 19:30:40 GMT
References: <485@paradigm.com>
Sender: news@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM
Reply-To: kend@mrloog.WR.TEK.COM (Ken Dickey)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 42

In article <485@paradigm.com> gjc@paradigm.com writes:
...
>So when I go to write an expert system at a startup-company
>do I decide to use LISP?
>
>NO!
>
>Why? Mainly the unreasonable cost of the RUNTIME portion of a lisp.
>
>three costs:
>(1) technical cost of the overly-complex and large runtime portions.
>(2) financial cost-of-sales for runtime licenses.
>(3) administrative costs of runtime licensing procedures.
>
>Do language vendors for C,FORTRAN,PASCAL generally charge a runtime
>license fee? No, they do not. (Not even 3rd-party vendors).
>
>But lisp vendors generally have various "technical" rationalizations for
>per-instance runtime licensing costs and complexities. No need to go
>into these here. The result is a classic downward spiral:
...
>-gjc


Perhaps you should try Scheme.  Aside from the academic/no-cost
compilers with source, Chez Scheme [Cadence Research Systems: (812)
333-9269] has an application builder which links in a minimal runtime
for stand-alone applications.  Chez runs on Sun3/4, Vax, Apollo, 88K
and various other boxes.

Using Scheme gets rid of 1,2,&3.  Don't forget the cost of storage
leaks.  [I know of at least 1 C++ product which uses 5 heaps!].

Also, don't forget the cost of development time.  If you use a
productive enviroment which gets your software done in 1/2 the time of
batch-compiled languages (C,FORTRAN,PASCAL) you may just hit your
market windows.

Perhaps I should ask what you mean by Lisp.  Lisp 1.5 probably is
dead!

-Ken Dickey