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From: bzs@WORLD.STD.COM (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: C's sins of commission (was: (pssst...fortran?))
Message-ID: <9009202057.AA08757@world.std.com>
Date: 20 Sep 90 20:57:40 GMT
References: <63613@lanl.gov>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28


LISP is a good example of a language which has rarely included any
explicit pointers yet has been made to do most anything. I've seen
LISPs with explicit pointer types (address foo) but I've never seen
that do anything which a dynamically allocated, type-coercible array
can't do (e.g. load object code into an array and then set its type to
compiled-function.) A nice example is the (PD) Franz Lisp arrays
package, implemented entirely in LISP except for one or two little
malloc-like primitives.

Of course, LISP has its own problems (which might make for interesting
"futures" discussions), notably its run-time interpreter overhead
making it difficult to deliver layered products w/o first making the
customer buy an entire LISP system.

For example, I have friends with LISP products they'd like to sell
for, say, $995/workstation. But the customer first has to buy a $2500
(or more) LISP to load the package into (and the customer may have no
interest in the LISP.) This has really stifled the market for low-cost
software implmented in LISP (not to mention that you're also dependent
on the OS and LISP system continuing to work together thru upgrades
which is often not the case, and the LISP vendor wants $$$ for new
releases.)

        -Barry Shein

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