Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!ut-sally!utah-cs!shebs
From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Against the Tide of Common LISP
Message-ID: <3835@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Jun-86 01:15:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.3835
Posted: Sun Jun 29 01:15:48 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Jun-86 04:34:05 EDT
References: <1311@well.UUCP> <3827@utah-cs.UUCP> <1019@isl1.ri.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 55

In article <1019@isl1.ri.cmu.edu> cycy@isl1.ri.cmu.edu (Christopher Young) writes:

>>Fortranners and Pascallers and Cers don't worry about this sort of thing,
>>because they just write sort routines and membership tests over and over
>>and over again, and wonder why they have to work 10 times as hard to get
>>their programs as sophisticated as the same ones in Lisp.
>
>Obviously, you know much about Common Lisp, and nothing about C (and probably
>Fortan or Pascal, but since I haven't used the languages in many years, I won't
>comment about them). Either that, or you are a pretty poor C programmer.

I started life as a Fortranner about 11 years ago, and worked with large
Fortran programs in industry.  I've also hacked C quite a bit, including
a C compiler - I might still be a lousy C programmer tho, there's no rating
system as for chess players... :-)

>There are reasons why people have C libraries, after all.

Well, non-polymorphic library functions aren't particularly useful.
A sort routine that only works on arrays of integers doesn't help me
sort some hairy structure with an integer slot in it.  My experience
with C is that getting any dynamic typing requires some really strange
union and pointer hacking that would be better done in assembly language
maybe.  In fact, much of such code seems to duplicate Lisp innards, although
someone not familiar with Lisp implementation might not realize it.

If C libraries are so useful, why are they 1 or 2 orders of magnitude
smaller than Lisp libraries?

>I have not duplicated code.

An ambitious assertion - I'd like to look at your code and see if that's
*really* true.  How do you do the equivalent of a membership test without
writing a loop each time?

> And there are definitely things
>I can do much faster in C than in Lisp

Sadly, this is still true; but the number of things has dwindled rapidly
in the past few years...

>The thing that bothers me the most [about CL] is the limitations of
>parameter passing. I forget exactly what the problem was...I think I wanted
>to have &optional parameters followed by &key, but I'd had to have a &rest
>between them. Most annoying. Oh well. I was told the reason for this, but
>as I recall, it didn't seem like a very good reason (and I wasn't alone
>in my opinion).

Sigh, most people flame about the brain-damage of having &keywords in
the *first* place, while others are unhappy about no general destructuring
a la 3-Lisp and POP-11.  Language designers just don't get no respect...

>					-- Chris Young.

							stan shebs