Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!ugle.unit.no!nuug!ulrik!math.uio.no!espen
From: espen@math.uio.no (Espen J. Vestre)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: So who's really using LISP?
Message-ID: <1991Feb7.090457.12061@ulrik.uio.no>
Date: 7 Feb 91 09:04:57 GMT
References: <806@mara.cognet.ucla.edu>
Sender: blarsen@ulrik.uio.no (Bj|rn Larsen)
Organization: Department of Mathematics, Univ. of Oslo
Lines: 30

In article <806@mara.cognet.ucla.edu> kroger@scarecrow.cognet.ucla.edu 
(James Kroger) writes:
> I'm in a research lab where AI-type programs 
> are the norm. The actual programming on these usually is 
> done by undergraduates and grad students, as is
> true of most university labs. The language most often used
> used to be LISP (we even have an Explorer), but simply because
> of the preference of the programmers, the language of choice
> is more often C now. I seldom hear of anyone using LISP anymore,

Hm.  Why don't you force these students to learn lisp?  It isn't good to 
grow up thinking C is all that there is to programming.  Being sort of at 
the fringe of the AI Society (doing natural language semantics / 
computational linguistics), I wonder what kinds of "AI programs" it is 
that someone ever could prefer to write in C.  I guess the least you need 
is a pile of C code to simulate some things that come for free in lisp:  
For instance _atoms_ (symbols), which is the most basic need for doing 
symbolic programming.  Does these guys reinvent atoms every time they need 
them (or worse, are they doing it all with strings??), or are there some 
nice libraries around which gives you some of the functionality of lisp 
inside C??

-----------------------------------------
Espen J. Vestre                 
Department of Mathematics
University of Oslo
P.o. Box 1053 Blindern
N-0316 OSLO 3
NORWAY                            espen@math.uio.no
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