Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!apl!mike
From: mike@apl (Mike Clarkson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Is this the end of the lisp wave?
Message-ID: <17550@ists.ists.ca>
Date: 18 Jan 91 08:01:48 GMT
References: <127724@linus.mitre.org> <5569@turquoise.UUCP>
Sender: news@ists.ists.ca
Reply-To: mike@apl.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson)
Organization: Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science
Lines: 41

In article <5569@turquoise.UUCP> ahlenius@motcid.UUCP (Mark Ahlenius) writes:
>djb@babypuss.mitre.org (David J. Braunegg) writes:
>
>>>Lack of demand due to Common LISP's enormous size, complexity, resource
>>>requirements, training, etc.
>>>
>>>Common LISP effectively died from obesity.
>
>>OK.  What are the problems preventing a smaller, more efficient Lisp
>>so that we aren't forced to use the almost-a-programming-language C?
>
>There is a smaller, faster dialect of CL out there and as far as I
>know it is being taught in some of the major universities
> - its Scheme.

I'm not sure if Scheme is really smaller. I am sure, that in my benchmarking
of almost every dialect of Scheme available, Franz and Lucid CL's are faster.
And this is without declarations, which are used regularly in CL.

As for being smaller, it depends on what you mean by smaller.  Yes the
languages as defined by their respective standards makes Scheme a smaller
dialect of Lisp.  But bear in mind that the Scheme standard does not define
many things lisp programmers consider essential, such as macros.  MIT makes
probably the most complete Scheme working environment, which includes
important elements of a Lisp programming environment such as macros,
packages, an inspector etc.; compiled it is over 35 Mbytes.  
Not small by my measure. 

> There appears to be some renewed interest in Scheme lately.

There is a lot of interest in Scheme, for very good reasons.  But speed and
size are not two of them.

Mike.


--
Mike Clarkson					mike@ists.ists.ca
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science	uunet!attcan!ists!mike
York University, North York, Ontario,		FORTRAN - just say no. 
CANADA M3J 1P3					+1 (416) 736-5611