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From: shebs@utah-orion.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: lisp
Message-ID: <174@utah-orion.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Sep-87 15:34:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: utah-ori.174
Posted: Tue Sep  8 15:34:00 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Sep-87 06:21:39 EDT
References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> <1519@sol.ARPA> <1931@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <649@sugar.UUCP>
Reply-To: shebs@orion.utah.edu.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 44

In article <649@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:

>[...] Or maybe you
>carry around a bunch of standard functions the way Emacs types carry around
>a set of standard macros. The first time you sit in front of the machine
>you port your functions to it and forget how the underlying language works.

Use Common Lisp - then every function you could ever think of has already been
defined and built in!  1/2 :-)  People do carry around functions, but this
is less common than it used to be - almost any bit of code in Lisp 1.5 will
fail horribly in Scheme or Common Lisp.

>Wouldn't it be easier to rewire if you could just keep your toolkit in
>Lisp 1.5, so you could use a new system the day you sit in front of it
>instead of a week later? FORTH has a similar capability, but if you know
>Forth-77 and Forth-83 you can be up to speed in a new FORTH in an hour or
>so.

Most people haven't tried Lisp 1.5, so they can talk blithely about
programming in it.  Forth programmers may be willing to tolerate operating
at a near-machine level, but the difference between Lisp 1.5 and a quality
Lisp environment is about 20-100,000 lines of Lisp code, depending on your
tastes.  You could get a hernia trying to carry it around!

>For god's sake... define some subset language that will be available in
>everyone's LISP, and stick to it.

car, cdr, cons, atom, cond, lambda - not much, but it's provably sufficient.
Now try to program in it!

The usage of the term "Lisp" is rather misleading, since "Lisp" designates a
family of languages rather than a single one.  Lisp 1.5, Scheme, Common Lisp,
and 3-Lisp have little in common besides parentheses.  Defining a common
subset is about like defining a common subset of C, Pascal, Modula-2, and A*a
(no problem, they all have semicolons, right?).

For Lisp standards, there's Common Lisp and Standard Scheme, but both have
plenty of bashers and haters - some of the commentary I've heard is highly
unprofessional...

>-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu