In article <·····················@uk03.bull.co.uk>, ······@hemel.bull.co.uk (Bill Birch) writes:
|> But surely Lisp IS a mainstream language! It has survived the test
|> of time. Whatever happened to ALGOL, et. al.? Just because a
|> language is not used by Joe Programmer doesn't mean that
|> it is dead. After all, Joe Programmer probably used Lisp
|> at College. He may use Lisp concepts in his 'C' programs.
I agree with this. From where I sit (ie. university environment)
Lisp looks pretty popular. It is being taught. Even though we
disposed of our Lisp machines, people still program in CL. People
use Lisp to program Emacs, and use symbolic math pakages such as
MACSYMA that are written on top of Lisp.
Other posts in this thread speculate that Lisp is less popular than
C because of some programming issue such as prefix vs infix math
notation, or function call notation. I don't think it has anything
to do with coding in the languages, as the majority of those who have
programmed in both is bound to prefer Lisp. ;^)
The main reason C is preferred over Lisp is the environmental baggage
Lisp carries. If I compile a small C program I get a small standalone
binary. I type the name of that binary and it runs. If I compile a
small CL program I get a small binary, but I have to load that into
an 8Mb environment in order to run it. If I want to run a different
C program, I just type its name. If I want to run another Lisp
program I either have to reload the 8Mb, or make sure there are no
name clashes with the previous program(s) loaded in. Then, what if
I want to run programs in seperate processes?
With the prevalence of operating systems like UNIX, Lisp would be
much much more popular if it compiled small standalone binaries.
--
Bill <·····@cs.purdue.edu>
No, no, all this misses the point. The *real* reason I like LISP is because
all of the following could be legal:
(rationalize My-Behavior)
(setf (car Marty)
'Lamborghini)
(make-instances-obsolete IBM-PCs)
(export 'Arms)
(dribble "Basketball")
(coerce My-Boss Raise)
(proclaim '(inline skates))
- Marty