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From: jjacobs@well.UUCP (Jeffrey Jacobs)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Spice Lisp (and more Common Lisp arguments)
Message-ID: <1341@well.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Jun-86 11:42:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.1341
Posted: Thu Jun 26 11:42:22 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jun-86 05:28:10 EDT
References: <1022@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: jjacobs@well.UUCP (Jeffrey Jacobs)
Organization: CONSART Systems Inc., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 46


In <1022@spice.cs.cmu.edu>, Dan Zigmond write:

>OK, Mr. Jacobs, so what's wrong with Spice Lisp?  Why do you keep emphasizing
>the fact that lots of implementations are based on it?  You ask when a good
>implementation of Common Lisp will come out that is not based on SPICE.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with SPICE (as I  say in a very recent
followup).  The problem is that it is very difficult to start from scratch and
should NOT be.  One of LISP's strengths was the experimentation in
implementation, which is very costly now.  Who says SPICE is the best
way to go?  We may never know.  And SPICE isn't 100% Steele either
(ask your boss).

I'm not attacking you, your work or SPICE...

>P.S. I do not think you did Stan Sheb's message justice.

I generally don't even respond to personal attacks such as his.  If he hadn't
made some technical points, I wouldn't have bothered.

> Problems like the ones you described with MEMBER can be fixed
>  with a single stroke of a good text editor (change all "(MEMBER ....)" to 
 >"(MEMBER .... :test #'equal)" or whatever)

 Why should CL suddenly change years of training, textbooks, etc?  I
 don't claim there is a concensus (just the opposite); that's just a handy
 and provocative term I use.  I think it's generally bad practice to get
 the whole property list; you should only GET single properties.

 I think most of your points are addressed by some of my followups.

 Doesn't it bother anybody that by the end of the year there won't be a
 single major Expert System Shell written in LISP; they will ALL have
 been rewritten in C or something similar?

> P.P.S. It's not as easy to bad mouth Common Lisp here as it was on Bix, is
>it Jeff? (-:

BIX was the wrong audience; the only reason I put it there was because
you said your were going to be a "gateway" to ARPA-NET. :-)  I
didn't have access you USENET at the time...

-Jeffrey M. Jacobs, CONSART Systems Inc., Manhattan Beach CA
CIS:[75076,2603]
BIX:jeffjacobs