Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!husc6!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
From: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: What's a PC? (was Re: Cynic's Guide to SE #6: Forthcoming)
Message-ID: <396@uwslh.UUCP>
Date: 24 Oct 88 21:09:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: uwslh.396
References: <9@helens.stanford.edu> <39400002@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <4935@garfield.MUN.EDU> <197@ai.etl.army.mil>
Reply-To: lishka@uwslh.UUCP (Fish-Guts)
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison, State Hygiene Lab
Lines: 51

In article <197@ai.etl.army.mil> mike@ai.etl.army.mil (Mike McDonnell) writes:
>
>The best software development environment on the planet earth is a lisp
>machine.  This is a "PC" in the generic sense.  It is the quality of the
>supporting environment that makes this so.  Those of us who know and
>love these beasts are saddened by the manufacturing and marketing
>ineptitude of the selling companies who have more-or-less insured that
>"lispms" will never be much more than a curiosity.  Sigh.

     Do other people in this group feel this way as well?  I agree
that Lisp environments typically have some nice features and tools,
but trying to read Lisp for too long makes me see non-existant
parentheses.  That and the dynamic scoping make it harder to read than
many other languages, IMHO.  Don't get me wrong: I think Lisp is one
of the all-time GREAT languages (although I prefer the Scheme
dialect), but I do not think it is one of the best to have to
write/read/revise/debug/maintain code in.  There just isn't enough
structure to the actual language.  BTW, I've used some Franz Lisp,
Emacs Lisp, XLisp, C-Scheme, and did several semester projects on
Xerox Lisp Workstations ("1108's") in InterLisp, LOOPS, and OPS5 (a
Lisp-derived language).

     Aside from the language, the Xerox 1108 workstations do not seem
to offer that much more than modern environments for other languages.
Windowing is now common.  Browsers are becoming common.
Language-oriented editors are becoming common.  Symbolic debuggers are
becoming common.  Interpretters for compiled languages (such as C) are
becoming common.  Although most language environments do not offer all
of the above features, most of them are present.  On my Amiga, I have
everything listed above except the interpreter (although not as well
integrated; what do you expect for mostly PD software? ;-).  Are Lisp
environments still *that* much better for development.?

     One thing I have considered doing is adding an extensive
preprocessor to Lisp, to make it look more "structured" (like C or
Pascal).  Essentially, one would write in my structured language (call
it CL), and the CL-parser would spit out Lisp code as an intermediate
language, to be interpretted or compiled or whatever.  I'm sure
*someone* has thought of this before.  Any comments?

>Mike McDonnell at the U.S. Army Engineer Topographic Laboratories, Bldg. 2592

					.oO Chris Oo.
-- 
Christopher Lishka                 ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene                   lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu
Immunology Section  (608)262-1617                            lishka@uwslh.uucp
				     ----
"...Just because someone is shy and gets straight A's does not mean they won't
put wads of gum in your arm pits."
                         - Lynda Barry, "Ernie Pook's Commeek: Gum of Mystery"