Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!chx400!bernina!neptune!mint!marti From: marti@mint.inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: So who's really using LISP? Message-ID: <25595@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> Date: 19 Feb 91 08:40:45 GMT References: <1227@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> <1991Feb18.082559@disuns2.epfl.ch> Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch Reply-To: marti@mint.inf.ethz.ch (Robert Marti) Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich Lines: 54 In article <1991Feb18.082559@disuns2.epfl.ch> baechler@disuns2.epfl.ch (Emmanuel Baechler) writes: > Here, we are still using Common Lisp for all our work, and there is no > consideration to "go back" to a classical language like C++. I'm amazed to learn that C++ is a "classical" language. It certainly isn't a classical language in my book, so what exactly is your definition of a classical language? A strongly-typed language? An imperative language? A language for which (almost) no interpreters exist? (Note that all of this is true for C++, even though C++ is more of an object-oriented than an imperative language -- if used correctly.) > I know that, theoretically, all languages are equivalent, An interesting statement, especially in conjunction with your remark on the expressive power of CommonLisp vs Scheme below. > but I am convinced that without lisp our programs would be unmanageable. What evidence do you have to support the above statement? Have you actually compared at least one nontrivial Lisp application (say >10000 lines of code) with the same application written in another language? (You may want to look at "C++ versus Lisp: A Case Study", by H. Trickey, SIGPLAN Notices Vol.23, No.2, February 1988, pp.9-18. Note that I do not claim that Trickey's findings generalize to _all_ applications, though.) > In addition, the environment of a Lisp Machine help us a lot. I don't doubt this for one minute. However, there are quite a few impressive programming environments for other languages running on "stock" hardware as well. > I don't know whether Scheme has really more expressive power than CL. Didn't you just tell us that "all [sic!] languages are equivalent"?! While I readily agree that Lisp is a very useful language for certain kinds of applications -- after all, I teach Scheme in one of my lectures -- I object to the above sweeping generalizations which appear to be rampant among _some_ people in the AI community. -- Robert Marti | Phone: +41 1 254 72 60 Institut fur Informationssysteme | FAX: +41 1 262 39 73 ETH-Zentrum | E-Mail: marti@inf.ethz.ch CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland |