>>"CS" == Cyber Surfer wrote on Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:13:57 -0000:
CS> For Windows, Lisp has to compete against tools like VC++, VB and
CS> Delphi. All these environments have strong support for platform
CS> specific GUI features. Every Lisp for Windows that I know of
CS> seems to lack such support. Lisp isn't alone in that respect, as
CS> MLWorks also has vey weak GUI support. The development envionment
CS> may be excellent, but that's not what Windows developers look
CS> for! Incredible, but true.
Use the right tool for the job. Nobody said that Lisp should be
the language of choice for every single application on the world. I
don't know if word processors or stuff like Excel should be written in
Lisp. Nobody would try to build Word in Perl, would they ? I just read
about Corels Office Paket in Java which must be unacceptebly slow
(though it's just a beta version, perhaps this will change).
I can imagine that a lot of programs could be distinguished in a part
written in Lisp and another written in any fancy GUI-designing
language around. If this is VB for the interface, why not ?
I know of a prolog system which I think is quite successful which works
as a kind of a logic server. One can implement the reasoning stuff
with prolog and can communicate with an awful lot of other languages
which might do the output or connecting to I/O-Ports. This makes
perfect sense to me.
It is just to bad that for many languages no clean foreign function
interface is defined (as in "standarized" that is :-) including both
prolog and lisp. Maybe Corba or any such thing could help.
Holger
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·······@zeus.gmd.de (Holger Schauer) wrote:
>Use the right tool for the job. Nobody said that Lisp should be
>the language of choice for every single application on the world. I
>don't know if word processors or stuff like Excel should be written in
>Lisp. Nobody would try to build Word in Perl, would they ? I just read
>about Corels Office Paket in Java which must be unacceptebly slow
>(though it's just a beta version, perhaps this will change).
It's laughable, even for Corelware.
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997 20:33:40 GMT, ········@wam.umd.edu (Robert Rodgers) wrote:
>·······@zeus.gmd.de (Holger Schauer) wrote:
>>Use the right tool for the job. Nobody said that Lisp should be
>>the language of choice for every single application on the world. I
>>don't know if word processors or stuff like Excel should be written in
>>Lisp. Nobody would try to build Word in Perl, would they ? I just read
>>about Corels Office Paket in Java which must be unacceptebly slow
>>(though it's just a beta version, perhaps this will change).
>
>It's laughable, even for Corelware.
>
Well, I tried the beta of Corel Office for Java. It's buggy, it lacks many
features, but under the decent JITted JVM (such as Microsoft one) it's not much
slower than their native version (Corel was always known for fat slow code...).
And writing those monster office suites in Lisp or something like that is not
laughable to me. First, GNU Emacs is (mostly) written in Lisp and most people
like its performance. Second, when you write a sufficiently large system, the
size overhead of Lisp runtime becomes negligible, even w/o using modern
treeshakers and such. And third, we can get the inter-application interfaces
(inside the suite) and a built-in extension language essentially for free.
Oleg
With a mighty <·····················@hamlet.zeus.gmd.de>,
·······@zeus.gmd.de wibbled into the void...
> Use the right tool for the job. Nobody said that Lisp should be
> the language of choice for every single application on the world. I
> don't know if word processors or stuff like Excel should be written in
> Lisp. Nobody would try to build Word in Perl, would they ? I just read
> about Corels Office Paket in Java which must be unacceptebly slow
> (though it's just a beta version, perhaps this will change).
So, what _is_ Lisp good for? Another way of putting it might be, how
do I find apps that I can write in Lisp? I know that's a question that
can may be answered differently by every programmer. I could rephrase
it: Can I find someone to pay me to write code in Lisp? That's also a
very personal question.
For those of us who don't always get to choose the tools they code in,
it may also be an irrelevant question.
> I can imagine that a lot of programs could be distinguished in a part
> written in Lisp and another written in any fancy GUI-designing
> language around. If this is VB for the interface, why not ?
This is the approach taken with Amzi Prolog, which compiles Prolog
code to a C++ class. This allows Amzi Prolog to integrate with the
Win32 API, and technologies like OLE. If there's a Lisp that can do
this, for an equally attractive price, then I've yet to find it.
> I know of a prolog system which I think is quite successful which works
> as a kind of a logic server. One can implement the reasoning stuff
> with prolog and can communicate with an awful lot of other languages
> which might do the output or connecting to I/O-Ports. This makes
> perfect sense to me.
Amzi Prolog? I believe I can afford that. It's a hell of a lot more
atrractive than almost any Lisp for Windows, simply because I'd be
able to use it for the code that I'm paid to write. I'd be more
comfortable using Lisp than Prolog, but I also expect that I'll be
more comfortable - and productive - using Prolog instead of C++.
I can't believe that somebody asked me to write an article about VC++
last year. I've no idea where they got the idea that I'd have anything
positive to say about it! The same goes for C++ in general.
> It is just to bad that for many languages no clean foreign function
> interface is defined (as in "standarized" that is :-) including both
> prolog and lisp. Maybe Corba or any such thing could help.
Or OLE, if you're a Windows programmer, as I currently am.
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