Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Is this the end of the lisp wave?
Message-ID: <3946@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Jan 91 17:49:27 GMT
References: <2456@paradigm.com> <22573@well.sf.ca.us> <96861@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <5256@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jan14.141651.12321@arris.com>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 29

In article <1991Jan14.141651.12321@arris.com> rshapiro@arris.com (Richard Shapiro) writes:
>AI programmers use Lisp for much simpler reasons:

I don't think Lisp will do all that well if only AI programmers use
Lisp.  For one thing, it's not clear that AI programmers will continue
to use Lisp.  There's already a tendency to move to C, especially for
applications that are fairly well understood.  (If you know how to
write it before you start, you can write it in C.)  There's also a
tendency to use tools, such as expert system shells, and for those
to be implemented in C rather than Lisp.  And, of course, if AI
doesn't do all that well itself, anything tied to it will suffer
too.

Fortunately, it isn't just AI programmers who use Lisp.  For example,
Lisp is doing fairly well as a language for teaching and as an embedded
extension language for editors, CAD systems, etc.  However, it is
unlikely that this is enough to sustain the Lisp industry at its
current level.

>5) For various reasons, Lisp systems tend to have quite sophisticated
>programming environments, and these are essential in the generation of
>complex programs (eg AI programs). Symbolics LISPMs are a particularly
>good example of this. The increase in productivity is impossible to
>overstate.

But other languages are catching up, and Lisp environments on
"conventional" machines tned not to match the symbolics.

-- jeff