In article <·················@best.best.com>
···@intentionally.blank-see.headers writes:
> Well, whenever I get involved in a new project, I give Lisp serious
> consideration. My group is looking into building a bunch of dynamic
> Web services, so I just went through evaluating all of this again.
This sounds familiar.
> People are willing to learn a new language, and they have a lot of
> choices. Java, Perl, Python, Tcl, C++, etc. They realize quickly
> that something dynamic would be nice. The language needs to be fairly
> standard so that co-workers can pick up a book and learn about it.
> This also requires multithreading and database integration (hence an
> FFI). It needs to run under UNIX and NT (since those are the
> platforms we deliver on). We may also want a standard GUI toolkit.
Same here. Only I'm not always part of the decision process.
> The only Lisp implementations that satisfy those constraints to my
> knowledge are Harlequin and Allegro. They are both excellent
> products. However to the tune of >$4000 (yes, that's right, that's
> how much those licenses cost for people outside academia), you can
Would that be LispWorks? I've been wondering how much it cost,
but suspected that if I had to ask, then it would surely be too
expensive. Products without a price list that you have to ask
for often are. If the >$4000 is for ACL for Unix, then I'm not
suprised, either. I seem to recall seeing prices like that refered
to here and there.
> hardly just buy them "out of curiosity". Now that the 80's are over,
> management actually wants some kind of concrete justification for
> this. With non-trivial runtime licenses, there are serious concerns
> about whether we could ever use them in any product (mainly because of
> the legal and managerial hassles involved, not even so much because of
> the cost). Long term product maintenance is also an issue (who in
> development/support is going to pick up maintenance of CL software)?
Ah, yes. Without a ready supply of Lisp programmers, you're in
trouble. It's far safer to choose C/C++, since it'll be years
before there's a shortage of _them_.
> And few of my coworkers are willing to invest much time learning a new
> language on the 30-60 day evaluation license you get with those
> implementations. (Allegro's FreeLisp is a nice idea, but only runs on
> Windows.)
Hmmm. I don't know anyone in software development who likes
taking chances. It makes them a little short sighted, but if
it keeps them working, I can't blame them for playing safe.
> The alternative is all too persuasive to people who weren't brought up
> on Lisp: go out, buy a few books on "Learning Perl in 48 Hours" and
> "Writing Dynamic Web Applications in Perl (CD with Perl and sample for
> Windows and major UNIX platforms included)", type "perl" at the
> prompt, and go. No licensing hassles, no need for multithreading
> (small footprint), shallow learning curves (doing small things is easy
> in Perl--you only recognize the mess you got yourself into later),
> source level debugging, and complete cross platform availability.
> Despite all the bad things that can be said about Perl, it actually is
> a highly dynamic and expressive language (of course, it's also slow,
> not robust, and idiosyncratic), so people actually do get the same
> feeling of power they get with Lisp.
Best of all, it's there. It's another case of playing safe.
You know that Perl will be around for many years, regardless
of how many, of how few, people want to use it. We don't have
to wait for Larry Wall to port it to a new platform, coz of
a mass of other people who'll do that for him.
Perl is incredibly safe.
> I have found it difficult to argue or work against that. I also find
> it difficult to put in an order for, say, $30000 in software licenses
> for something that neither is hyped up much these days nor for which I
> can make a reasonable business justification, in particular when systems
> that are hyped up much more (Java, Smalltalk, etc.) are either essentially
> free or a fraction of the cost.
Yes, hype. Memes.
> If I got my facts wrong and you know of a cheap, multithreaded
> CommonLisp and books like "Learning CommonLisp in 21 Days",
> "Practical String Processing in CommonLisp", and "Writing Web
> Applications in CommonLisp", do let me know (the last one may
> actually be in the works I hear).
It's time that some of us tried writing such books. Perhaps a
book will be my best hope for making money out of Lisp coding.
I have one or two personal projects that might make an excellent
book of this sort. However, I bad enough at writing internal
documentation, never mind a readable article or a book. Still,
next time I'm unemployed, I'll seriously consider it.
Let's fight back with some pro-Lisp memes.
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