From: Enrique Graziano-Areste
Subject: Why Lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <57ht7c$ogg@diable.upc.es>
 I only want to make a very little question. Believe me, I do not
want to start any kind of "flame war" about the relative value of
one language over another. I need your help. I only have knowledge
about C, pascal and BASIC. I want to start to make some hobby 
work in the AI field. I am considering to learn Lisp. However, 
I do not know which are the supposed superiority of Lisp in the 
AI world. It is only because of the tradition? Please, help me.
If the answer to my question appears in a FAQ please point me
to it.

Enrique


(I am sorry about my English)
From: Nat Makarevitch
Subject: Re: Why Lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <m2g21roots.fsf@nataa.fr.eu.org>
Enrique Graziano-Areste writes:

> I do not know which are the supposed superiority of Lisp in the AI
> world.

read the "Paradigms of AI Programming", Peter Norvig, Morgan/Kaufmann,
ISBN1-55860-191-0, starting page 25...

-- 
Nat    Linux
From: Howard R. Stearns
Subject: Re: Why Lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <32A2EE3F.7DE14518@elwoodcorp.com>
Nat Makarevitch wrote:
> 
> Enrique Graziano-Areste writes:
> 
> > I do not know which are the supposed superiority of Lisp in the AI
> > world.
> 
> read the "Paradigms of AI Programming", Peter Norvig, Morgan/Kaufmann,
> ISBN1-55860-191-0, starting page 25...
> 
> --
> Nat    Linux

The introduction to the above book summarizes what the author likes
about Lisp and is available on-line at:
 http://www.harlequin.com/books/norvig/paip-preface.html#whylisp

Also, the decade old Symbolics techincal summary cites some advantages
at:
 http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig/symbolic-computing.html

You might also look at some Lisp vendor sites such as:
 http://www.franz.com
 http://www.harlequin.com
 http://www.digitool.com

in addition to the FAQ at:
 ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/ai/lang/lisp/faq/0.html
comp.lang.lisp / 1996 / nov