The last thing that I want to do is annoy anyone, but at the moment
I am stuck on an assignment. So if this post is rubbish please ignore it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
First a bit about me.
I am 2nd year Computer Science at the University of Technology Sydney Aust.
For an assignment for Online Systems I have to research Real-time/ online
languages.
In my research I keep coming across LISP as an example.
Most of the documents are from journals and they sometimes too technical
foe so I was hoping someone could explain a few things.
The focus of the assignment is identifying the benefits of Real time languages
and how they differ from conventional languages.
What I would really like to know is what are some of the applications
written using LISP? why LISP was chosen? Was another language considered,
or even used for some of the project but was found lacking in some way?
I don't necessarily need exact examples rather a new approach in
trying to understand what makes a person/group choose LISP over
another language and/or methods.
My email address is ········@socs.uts.edu.au
May I add that this is a sincere question. No flames please.
Thankyou,
George Wright.
In article <··········@woodstock.socs.uts.EDU.AU>
········@socs.uts.edu.au (George James Wright) writes:
> What I would really like to know is what are some of the
> applications written using LISP?
Probably the most widely-used Lisp program worldwide is
AutoCAD(tm), a CAD package that runs on DOS PCs, maybe
Windows now, too. As I recall, it is based on a Lisp
dialect called AutoLisp(tm), and end users learn that
language in order to use AutoCAD. So there are a lot more
Lisp programmers around than you might think!!
The history of the product, the company AutoDesk,
Inc. (Sausalito, CA) that sells it, and the company's
founder John Walker is fascinating, but too long to go into
here. Someone may be able to post a pointer to that sort of
information, but it's off-topic for comp.lang.lisp.
Bill Park
=========
> The focus of the assignment is identifying the benefits of Real time languages
> and how they differ from conventional languages.
>
> What I would really like to know is what are some of the applications
> written using LISP? why LISP was chosen? Was another language considered,
> or even used for some of the project but was found lacking in some way?
>
> I don't necessarily need exact examples rather a new approach in
> trying to understand what makes a person/group choose LISP over
> another language and/or methods.
A lot could be written in answer to this. I'll limit myself to
a few references that I know off the top of my head:
_Lisp_, by Winston and Horn. They're a textbook, so they spend an
introductory chapter answering, "Why Lisp?"
Many textbooks of AI that use Lisp would discuss, "Why Lisp?"
_Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_, by Abelson
and Sussman. A great CS textbook using Scheme, a dialect of Lisp.
The FAQ for this group.
.............
And finally, a resource that even seasoned users may not know about.
Look on the WWW in Yahoo, under Computers / Languages / Lisp.
You'll find this page from the Ass'n of Lisp Users:
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/staff/miller/alu.html
It has a lot about the history of Lisp, including essays by
John McCarthy himself. If you want to know "Why ____", it helps
to know why the language was invented. Fortran was for making
scientific calc'ns easier than they'd be in an assembly language.
Cobol was meant to be readable by businesspeople. Etc.