From: Will Hartung
Subject: Lisp is ugly and its mother dresses it funny (Was: GUI Debuggers)
Date:
Message-ID: <vfr750EK7tFr.D1B@netcom.com>
I don't read other language groups, so I don't know if these kind of
threads happen over and over and over again in them or not.
First we get bombarded with "C is fast, Lisp is slow" from the bit
manglers on one side, and now we're getting hammered with "Lisp is low
tech, unusable and user hostile to newbies" from the VB camp.
I feel the folks coming here resemble Steve Martin in France:
"Those French have got a different word for everything!"
Yup, Lisp, and its environment work, look, and perform differently
than your modern, everyday GUI IDE. You hear all of these wonderful
things about Lisp, but when you fire it up, all you get is USER(1):.
Hardly extravagant.
Lisp has always been away from the mass market pack for environments
because the primary users of the language were not in mass markets.
Their applications were not mass market, and their coders were not from
mass markets. Yet, the masses always come rushing in and exclaim that
something is dramatically wrong with Lisp because it doesn't conform to
their standards.
There are 2 major vendors of Lisp tools for Windows (Franz and
Harlequin).
There are 4 major vendors of C/C++ for Windows (MS, Symantec, Borland,
and Watcom). Watcom is criticized as having a so-so interface, and
bat-out-of-hell compiler. (Oh dear...and it's marketed to
"professional" programmers. Is that legal?)
There is 1(!) major vendor of Pascal for Windows.
I'm guessing that there are 4096 vendors of Java right now, but that
will filter down I'm sure.
Of course, "Lisp is Dead". Despite the two vendors. Despite the several
PD implementations. Despite the fact that new books that are more than
rehashes of the same old stuff continue to appear.
But, folks from the other environments come over here in to c.l.l and
cry how there oranges are superior to our apples. We need to pull our
heads out and "get with it".
I don't get the feeling long term folks that frequent c.l.l and USE
Lisp all the time feel that they are missing something. It doesn't seem
that they look over at their companions clicking away on their GUI
machines and look back at their USER(1): with a disheartened sigh.
"This is all I get." Maybe they're just old die-hard grognards.
But even Erik, a vocal c.l.l tenant, seems to be a relative new-comer
compared to a lot of folks here who cut their teeth on the Lisp
machines of yore, or were knee deep in the doings of Lisp during the
AI boom. Hardly a grognard, but certainly a die-hard.
I've done my share of GUI stuff, and I've used the GUI environments.
But even I don't miss the glamour of GUI when writing what little code
I do write. If anything, it is refreshing.
Anyway, as a plea to those who come far and wide to question the hows
and whys of Lisp environments and Lisp coding, let me paraphrase
Steve:
"Those Lisp folks have a different way of doing everything!"
We're not elitists. We don't want to scare people away. But Lisp has
more tradition as a language and environment than most of the its
users, and despite this long history, it still seems to grow and
evolve. It's not an easy thing to box in.
On the other hand, we are not the Ahmish of the computer world, set in
our ways. It's just that the demands that direct the Lisp world are
different than a flashy demo and bullet-point compliance with the latest
review from InfoWorld.
I know. This is USENET. This post will be dead in a week. But I do
tire of these threads.
--
Will Hartung - Rancho Santa Margarita. It's a dry heat. ······@netcom.com
1990 VFR750 - VFR=Very Red "Ho, HaHa, Dodge, Parry, Spin, HA! THRUST!"
1993 Explorer - Cage? Hell, it's a prison. -D. Duck
From: Tony Tanzillo
Subject: Re: Lisp is ugly and its mother dresses it funny (Was: GUI Debuggers)
Date:
Message-ID: <65gg5d$5vc@mtinsc04.worldnet.att.net>
Will Hartung <······@netcom.com> wrote in article
<················@netcom.com>...
> I don't read other language groups, so I don't know if these kind of
> threads happen over and over and over again in them or not.
>
> First we get bombarded with "C is fast, Lisp is slow" from the bit
> manglers on one side, and now we're getting hammered with "Lisp is low
> tech, unusable and user hostile to newbies" from the VB camp.
What VB Camp are you referring to? I have never written
even one (1) line of VB in my life. The last time I used
BASIC was on a Commodore Vic-20.
I have spent the past ten years making a living writing
custom add-in applications for AutoCAD using LISP. I've
written or contributed to three books about it. I've
written my own LISP editor (but I will confess that I
didn't write it in LISP).
Do you really think I've come here to bash the programming
language that I been using almost every single day for the
past 10 years?
Go back to sleep.
--
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