Newsgroups: comp.lang.clos
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!jln
From: jln@leland.Stanford.EDU (Jared Nedzel)
Subject: Re: Lisp -vs- C
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.172218.13803@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: AIR, Stanford University
References: <42280@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 91 17:22:18 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <42280@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> larry@postgres.Berkeley.EDU writes:

>  And, has anybody
>looked at the customization language for AutoCad?  It's a home grown Lisp.
>I don't know if either product uses an object system.

Btw, AutoLisp is described by AutoDesk as a "superset of a subset of Lisp."
That is, it is a subset of lisp with access to the drawing/object manipulation
functions of AutoCad.  It doesn't have CLOS.  People who have used it tell
me it has some significant limitations as an implementation of lisp.  The
newest version of AutoCad (Release 11), allows developers to customise
AutoCad using C, rather than AutoLisp.

Regarding the problems of developing mixed language systems, let me
also second Walter Gilette's (sp?) comments:  debugging a mixed-language
C-Lisp program is a bitch.  I'm working on a network communication program
that does the low-level communications in C and more interesting stuff
in Lisp.  This results in a lot of potential failure points.



-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jared L. Nedzel  nedzel@cive.stanford.edu   jln@portia.stanford.edu