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From: barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Against the Tide of Common LISP
Message-ID: <4933@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 24-Feb-87 02:49:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4933
Posted: Tue Feb 24 02:49:48 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Feb-87 00:47:51 EST
References: <2601@well.UUCP> <2603@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: barmar@eddie.MIT.EDU (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT, EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

In article <2603@well.UUCP> jjacobs@well.UUCP (Jeffrey Jacobs) writes:
>Of course the real problem with Common LISP is that the user has
>no choice; there are no alternate primitives which don't involve the
>keyword overhead, so the experienced user must instead rely on the
>implementor for efficiency.

And if there were, you would be complaining about the fact that the
language provides two ways of doing these things (the primitive and
keyworded versions), and that it makes the language even bigger.

>There is no guarantee, or even good estimate,
>how the efficiency will vary from machine to machine, or implementation
>to implementation, thus offsetting some of the great claims of
>portability.  (What runs well on one implementation may
>run terribly on another).

I hope you aren't intending to imply that only Common Lisp is subject
to this problem.  It is true of all languages for which there are
multiple implementations, and true of most other standardized things
(for example, VT102's implement X3.64 more slowly than VT200's).

>>I also point out that, despite any misgivings voiced in the paper, Gabriel
>>is a major player in Lucid Inc., whose sole product is a Common Lisp 
>>implementation.  Evendently he believes that it is a practical, real-world
>>programming language.

I'd like to point out that Gabriel is one of the most vocal members of
X3J13 (the Common Lisp standardization committee) regarding the issues
of simplification.  For example, he is one of the people arguing for
the merging of the function and value cells, in the style of Scheme
and EuLisp.  Evidently he would rather work WITH the Common Lisp
community than AGAINST it in order to move it in the directions he
would prefer.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar