A subject of much conversation on this message board is the
relative merits of LISP and scheme over other languages. It seems many
believe LISP to be a superior language and wonder why its not more
used/accepted by the programming community. Last summer I bought an
old NeXT and started programming LISP on that with gcl. However I have
been very frustrated with my lack of success in working on my IBM PC.
The facts are that most people use windows/dos computers. Another fact
is that people are wary of buying a several hundred dollar programming
suite before they get a chance to work a little with the language.
Therefore it seems a horrible oversight that aren't really any free
LISP implementations (with compilers) for pc's without linux/bsd
(another fact people are lazy and don't want to install a whole other
operating system to run one thing). There is clisp, which is a good
program but it is incredibly slow and its compilation method is
unusual (.fas files?). It seems every system but the most common one
has such tools. I think LISP is a great language, but it would be good
for LISP and I would be very thankful if some of you port gurus tried
to bring over gcl, cmucl or the like...
·······@erols.com
·······@erols.com writes:
> A subject of much conversation on this message board is the
> relative merits of LISP and scheme over other languages. [Give me
> a PC or give me death! Give me a PC and a Lisp implementation.]
You lump Scheme and Lisp together in your message. I don't know much
about Lisp implementations. But PC Scheme, originally by TI, is a
pretty good Scheme system for PC's (I've used it on as miniscule a
machine as an 8086 with 640 K, and the system and some of my code all
fit on one floppy). You can find it for free on the 'net. If you
have a more contemporary PC system (running Windows 95 or NT), I would
recommend DrScheme (http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/packages/drscheme/),
also available for free on the Web.
Note that follow-ups have been redirected.
'shriram