Hello, Lisp community.
Please forgive a rather long-winded, self-serving post
here; I have a sincere question to ask all of you.
I have been what is now commonly called a "computing
professional" for a couple of decades, and I have seen
many things in computing change, sometimes for the better,
and sometimes not. Lisp has, it seems to me, continued
to change for the better, and has been an abiding and
deep interest of mine for several years. I believe that
it is a language, and a mode of thinking, whose time has
come (or perhaps, has never gone). I do not have a job
where Lisp is used, and in spite of many efforts, have
not been able to secure one, not having long or profound
paid experience with the language, or notable academic
achievements that would recommend me to it.
Given these conditions, my question to you is this: how
can I, in the remainder of my career, best promote the
use, understanding, and spread of Lisp as a useful,
desirable, wonderful, and truly "mainstream" computing
language?
I am quite open to all suggestions, from study to teaching
to continuing to look for that special job to writing
freeware, or whatever comes to your collective minds as
as the most effective approach. I really want to look
forward to a world where Lisp is considered, along with
C++, Java, and whatever other language of the day, as
a serious development and implementation alternative in
the typical software project.
With my qualifications, how can I help achieve this?
--
Gregory Santos e-mail: ·····@digaudio.com
Gregory Santos wrote in message <·················@digaudio.com>...
>Given these conditions, my question to you is this: how
>can I, in the remainder of my career, best promote the
>use, understanding, and spread of Lisp as a useful,
>desirable, wonderful, and truly "mainstream" computing
>language?
>...
My suggestion is to help with Per Bothner's excellent Kawa, an
implementation of Scheme for the Java VM.
I believe that Kawa (regrettably there is also an IDE for Java called
Kawa which is something else entirely) while currently under most folks'
radar will eventually become a significant part of the computing
foundation. That is because it is the best merging of what is great
about Lisp and great about Java. Kawa carries on Scheme's tradition of
being a great back end for very high level languages (which is something
I see as one of Lisp's strongest applications in the sense of language
competition) and is thus the coolest way to generate Java VM class
bytecodes (which is the best way to have your code to benefit the most
people in the most ways).
You can find out more about Kawa, Scheme for the Java VM at:
<http://www.cygnus.com/~bothner/kawa.html>
jim
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
James P. White Netscape DevEdge Champion for IFC
Director of Technology Adventure Online Gaming http://www.gameworld.com
Developers of Gameworld -- Live Action Role-Playing and Strategic Games
···@pagesmiths.com Pagesmiths' home is http://www.pagesmiths.com
* Gregory Santos <·····@digaudio.com>
| With my qualifications, how can I help achieve this?
I would suggest acquiring a commercial Lisp development environment, and
develop tools to help create your other software, instead of using Perl
and shell scripts and such, and as you get more experience, use Lisp to
"think", while you might still deploy in some other language. it is not
glorious work, but it _will_ give you a lot of experience just coding
stuff up and working with Lisp code. this will help you figure out which
of these things you find easier to do with Lisp. if among them you find
a task for which Lisp is particularly well suited, you have also gained
the ability to argue for this to your peers or managers or clients or
whatever, and so that could be your first real project and showcase.
take it from there.
note that this does not make Lisp "mainstream" for others, but it does
make Lisp "mainstream" for yourself, and I think anybody who wants to
make a change needs to start with himself. it is also very frustrating
to wait for others to make the necessary difference first.
BTW, the purpose of using a commercial Lisp environment is to gain solid
experience with the stuff it provides above and beyond Common Lisp and
which turns out to be necessary to developing Common Lisp applications.
my favorite environment is Allegro Common Lisp from Franz Inc, which
comes in a free Trial Edition for Linux. (I don't recommend IDE's and
the like because I have never seen any good programmers who have grown up
on them (or even on Windows in general) -- most such programmers are
_extremely_ lazy and unwilling to do what it takes. I keep looking for
good programmers constantly, and the ones I have found are not mainstream
nor do they use mainstream tools or languages. this should not really
come as a surprise to anyone.)
#:Erik
--
The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
Erik Naggum wrote in message <················@naggum.no>...
Wrote:
>
>...........................................................................
......(I don't recommend IDE's and
> the like because I have never seen any good programmers who have grown up
> on them (or even on Windows in general) -- most such programmers are
> _extremely_ lazy and unwilling to do what it takes. I keep looking for
> good programmers constantly, and the ones I have found are not mainstream
> nor do they use mainstream tools or languages. this should not really
> come as a surprise to anyone.)
I enjoy reading your pontificals and for the most agree with the content
(though some are a bit mean spirited). Alas, I think the above statement
is a bit narrow. Not entering the unix vs windows debate, but my customers
are asking for windows applications. I do little consulting these days.
The customers I have now are from my younger hungrier days. I hoped their
current system (DOS 16 bit) would out live me and I would wrap my death
draperies about me knowing I was not going to have to port their systems.
Oops, up jumped the devil, damn technology. Guess I am going to have to
learn a bit about running rs232 ports (in lisp no less) from windows or die
pretty soon. Lets see which will it be....hmmm
thinking my options over
rusty
* "rusty craine" <········@flash.net>
| Not entering the unix vs windows debate, but my customers are asking for
| windows applications.
that's no excuse for having programmers _grow up_ on Windowized IDE's.
most of the time, you need the experience of what was once hard in order
to understand why what is now easy is the way it is and why it is good
for _some_ parts of the work (and which parts). if you grow up in a too
easy environment, you never get to appreciate why some tasks are hard
only because somebody else didn't make _those_ tasks easy for you.
I think a fitting analogy is to remember that keeping airplanes in the
air and on schedule is no small feet, and that the more you are going to
work with them, the less simple it becomes. in contrast, imagine if the
ground crew had been brought up thinking their job was all about being
served complimentary drinks from beautiful women all day. that's what I
think Windowized IDE's do to programmers in their formative years.
#:Erik
--
The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?
On 03 Nov 1998 18:52:19 +0000, Erik Naggum <····@naggum.no> claimed or
asked:
% I think a fitting analogy is to remember that keeping airplanes in the
% air and on schedule is no small feet, and that the more you are going to
% work with them, the less simple it becomes. in contrast, imagine if the
% ground crew had been brought up thinking their job was all about being
% served complimentary drinks from beautiful women all day. that's what I
% think Windowized IDE's do to programmers in their formative years.
The worst of them must be VB.
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential
programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
--- E. W. Dijkstra
VB adds the IDE that does pretty much everything for you, along with
the CaptiveX controls, so that the "programmer" is more like a
designer of cheap art to be sold to tourists. With VB, a user can
create an application that looks just like Internet Explorer. It
would even have the same functionality. That same user may not know a
single HTML tag.
However, I don't think IDEs should be completely condemned. They are
tools to help organize code and projects. They make life a little
easier for the programmer. It is nice to be able to jump straight to
the definition of a function or other symbol. As long as the tool
doesn't become a serogate code generator that discourages having any
knowledge of the underlying details of the system, I think it is a
good thing.
Still, I can't help thinking that the days of skilled programmers are
few in number. The programmer will be replaced by the wizard that
generates the code for him. In the end, programming will be drawing
lines between widgets that were built by earlier programmers, long
since gone. These diagrams will become widgets themselves. The cycle
will continue. Call me a Ludite.
--
David Steuber (ver 1.31.2a)
http://www.david-steuber.com
To reply by e-mail, replace trashcan with david.
"Ignore reality there's nothing you can do about it..."
-- Natalie Imbruglia "Don't you think?"
········@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper") writes:
> Still, I can't help thinking that the days of skilled programmers are
> few in number. The programmer will be replaced by the wizard that
> generates the code for him. In the end, programming will be drawing
> lines between widgets that were built by earlier programmers, long
> since gone. These diagrams will become widgets themselves. The cycle
> will continue. Call me a Ludite.
One has heard this for years, but quite the opposite has happened:
The need for skilled programmers has never been as high as it is
now - and the damage done by all the unskilled who never get the
chance to learn before they have to deliver has never been higher!
Since we all know (don't we?) that all that talk about "reusable
objects" is extremely over-hyped, just like the "fourth-generation-
language" hype was (somebody told me in '85 that I was a natural-born
hacker since I showed any interest in low-level languages like Pascal,
and what happened since then? The 4th revolution? No, the Dark Age
of C!). And since we won't get them all to start using CLOS next
year ;-), I can't see why the need for skilled programmers shouldn't
stay high, and even higher than today, for many years to come.
(And since the demand is bigger than the supply, and since they use
all those mediocre tools, we'll get more and more bloatware with an
increasing number of security holes. The future of our society is
grim - Brazil, here I come ;-)!)
--
regards,
Espen Vestre
(in a pessimistic november mood today)
········@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper") wrote:
>The worst of them must be VB.
>
>"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
>students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential
>programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
>
>--- E. W. Dijkstra
that's pretty unfair qoting dijkstra on basic that was like gwbasic that
times and NOT comparable at all to the new VB. E.g. I never needed any
GOTO in VB and it is usable purely functional and object-orientated as
well. VB is really nice if you take care.
of course it is limited but i would replace Dijkstra's "BASIC" term in
this old quote with "Assembler" or maybe "C" nowadays.
---
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html
In article <················@judy>,
Reini Urban <······@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at> wrote:
> ········@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper") wrote:
> >The worst of them must be VB.
> >
> >"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
> >students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential
> >programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
> >
> >--- E. W. Dijkstra
>
> that's pretty unfair qoting dijkstra on basic that was like gwbasic that
> times and NOT comparable at all to the new VB. E.g. I never needed any
> GOTO in VB and it is usable purely functional and object-orientated as
> well. VB is really nice if you take care.
> of course it is limited but i would replace Dijkstra's "BASIC" term in
> this old quote with "Assembler" or maybe "C" nowadays.
IMHO both Dijkstra's assertion about BASIC and your's about Assembler are
sligthly exaggerated. I began with BASIC, not VB but quite minimalist BASIC
on a Z80 micro, then moved to Z80 assembler. I have to say that when I
started to study Pascal at university I had no serious problems assimilating
Pascal's procedural style. I never using labels/gotos, trying to avoid global
variables, et cetera. Moreover, I'm familiar with many quite good programmers
grown-up on BASIC (this language was an official standard for school
education in our country for many years). I have no warm feelings to BASIC,
but for me migration from C to C++ was much more painful than from BASIC to
Pascal.
As of assembler, I find it extremely useful to study. It can introduce many
useful things: self-modification, how computer guts work, memory management,
optimisations, relocatable code, dichotomy of speed and code size, and great
patience. Only those familiar with assembler can truly understood all benefits
that high level language gives to programmer. After hacking assembler for a
while one definitely can say if he choosen his career correctly.
Many people started with bicycles, but nevertheless they can drive a car now.
Cheers,
Eugene Zaikonnikov
Spammers, you're welcome:
··········@localhost
·····@localhost
····@localhost
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
In article <················@judy>,
Reini Urban <······@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at> wrote:
> ········@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper") wrote:
> >The worst of them must be VB.
> >
> >"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
> >students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential
> >programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
> >
> >--- E. W. Dijkstra
>
> that's pretty unfair qoting dijkstra on basic that was like gwbasic that
> times and NOT comparable at all to the new VB. E.g. I never needed any
> GOTO in VB and it is usable purely functional and object-orientated as
> well. VB is really nice if you take care.
> of course it is limited but i would replace Dijkstra's "BASIC" term in
> this old quote with "Assembler" or maybe "C" nowadays.
IMHO both Dijkstra's assertion about BASIC and your's about Assembler are
sligthly exaggerated. I began with BASIC, not VB but quite minimalist BASIC
on a Z80 micro, then moved to Z80 assembler. I have to say that when I
started to study Pascal at university I had no serious problems assimilating
Pascal's procedural style. I never using labels/gotos, trying to avoid global
variables, et cetera. Moreover, I'm familiar with many quite good programmers
grown-up on BASIC (this language was an official standard for school
education in our country for many years). I have no warm feelings to BASIC,
but for me migration from C to C++ was much more painful than from BASIC to
Pascal.
As of assembler, I find it extremely useful to study. It can introduce many
useful things: self-modification, how computer guts work, memory management,
optimisations, relocatable code, dichotomy of speed and code size, and great
patience. Only those familiar with assembler can truly understood all benefits
that high level language gives to programmer. After hacking assembler for a
while one definitely can say if he choosen his career correctly.
Many people started with bicycles, but nevertheless they can drive a car now.
Cheers,
Eugene Zaikonnikov
Spammers, you're welcome:
··········@localhost
·····@localhost
····@localhost
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
In article <···········@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ······@cit.org.by says...
> IMHO both Dijkstra's assertion about BASIC and your's about Assembler are
> sligthly exaggerated. I began with BASIC, not VB but quite minimalist BASIC
> on a Z80 micro, then moved to Z80 assembler.
SNAP! After Basic, I used assembler and Forth. I even wrote several Forth
systems in assembler. You can use something like GOTO in Forth, but you
don't have to. I stopped using Basic as soon as I found Forth (or Forth
found me).
> I have to say that when I
> started to study Pascal at university I had no serious problems assimilating
> Pascal's procedural style. I never using labels/gotos, trying to avoid global
> variables, et cetera. Moreover, I'm familiar with many quite good programmers
> grown-up on BASIC (this language was an official standard for school
> education in our country for many years). I have no warm feelings to BASIC,
> but for me migration from C to C++ was much more painful than from BASIC to
> Pascal.
My first experiences with C were also painful. Learning Forth was much
easier. Even learning assembly language was more fun, and that started
with hand assembling the code and entering it in hex. I soon found that
an assembler helped! Curiously, I used MACRO-80 - the only Microsoft
program that I still respect. They still knew how to code in those days.
Still, a Forth assembler could beat it.
> As of assembler, I find it extremely useful to study. It can introduce many
> useful things: self-modification, how computer guts work, memory management,
> optimisations, relocatable code, dichotomy of speed and code size, and great
> patience. Only those familiar with assembler can truly understood all benefits
> that high level language gives to programmer. After hacking assembler for a
> while one definitely can say if he choosen his career correctly.
This is my opinion, too. I dispair when I think of the hordes of C
programmers who don't know the machine under the hood. Actually, it's the
code they write that makes me dispair...
> Many people started with bicycles, but nevertheless they can drive a car now.
[grin] I used to like writing code that writes assembly code. I even did
that in Basic, once. Some people wrote Basic code that POKE'd machine
code into REM statements. I wrote Forth code that wrote machine code.
Now I use C as my "assembly language".
--
Remove insect from address to email me | You can never browse enough
will write code that writes code that writes code for food
Martin Rodgers wrote in message ...
>In article <···········@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ······@cit.org.by says...
.../...
>SNAP! After Basic, I used assembler and Forth. I even wrote several Forth
>systems in assembler. You can use something like GOTO in Forth, but you
>don't have to. I stopped using Basic as soon as I found Forth (or Forth
>found me).
That's funny I've followed exactly the same path.
I started with Basic on A TRS80 (Z80) then switched to Z80 assembler and
wrote a Forth system.
After that I got LeLisp a french lisp interpreter of that time and started
to learn Lisp.
It's hard to imagine a lisp system that worked with 16Kb of Ram...
Now my Lisp system has 512Mb of Ram to play and the Z80 is a small piece of
VHDL
code to put in much bigger integrated circuits...
Marc Battyani
Context Free Ltd
In article <··················································@library-
proxy.airnews.net>, ·············@csi.com says...
> It's hard to imagine a lisp system that worked with 16Kb of Ram...
Apparently there was a Lisp interpreter that run on a 16K TRS-80!
The first Lisp code I read was in the Byte article that used it,
along with the W&H pattern matching code. BTW, the first time I
saw them "animal" program, it was a Basic version that appeared
in Byte. It was horrible! I had to buy the W&H book just to read
a decent version, i.e. in Lisp. Thus, I learned Lisp.
--
Remove insect from address to email me | You can never browse enough
will write code that writes code that writes code for food
On Wed, 04 Nov 1998 09:14:37 GMT, Reini Urban
<······@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at> claimed or asked:
% that's pretty unfair qoting dijkstra on basic that was like gwbasic that
% times and NOT comparable at all to the new VB. E.g. I never needed any
% GOTO in VB and it is usable purely functional and object-orientated as
% well. VB is really nice if you take care.
% of course it is limited but i would replace Dijkstra's "BASIC" term in
% this old quote with "Assembler" or maybe "C" nowadays.
I have to disagree. VB is not object oriented. It is a glue language
for COM objects.
VB would also be nothing without C. All of VB functionality is
dependant on the underlying C code.
C was is and always will be a high level assembler. That was its
purpose. It has done well in that area. For some reason, people
thought it would also be a good application language. It can
certainly be used for application development, but that requires a lot
of work. It is much better to use a language that is close to the
problem domain rather than to the machine. A compiler can make the
final code play nice with the machine.
I've looked at VB and found it to be quite crippled. Without a large
box of COM objects, you can do nothing in it.
Unlike Dijkstra, I think that a BASIC programmer can be rehabilitated.
It's not easy though ;-).
--
David Steuber (ver 1.31.2a)
http://www.david-steuber.com
To reply by e-mail, replace trashcan with david.
"Ignore reality there's nothing you can do about it..."
-- Natalie Imbruglia "Don't you think?"
········@david-steuber.com (David Steuber "The Interloper") wrote:
>On Wed, 04 Nov 1998 09:14:37 GMT, Reini Urban
><······@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at> claimed or asked:
>
>% that's pretty unfair qoting dijkstra on basic that was like gwbasic that
>% times and NOT comparable at all to the new VB. E.g. I never needed any
>% GOTO in VB and it is usable purely functional and object-orientated as
>% well. VB is really nice if you take care.
>% of course it is limited but i would replace Dijkstra's "BASIC" term in
>% this old quote with "Assembler" or maybe "C" nowadays.
>
>I have to disagree. VB is not object oriented. It is a glue language
>for COM objects.
VB is not only a COM client, from VB5 on you can create your own
derivable classes, COM objects and COM servers and even compile to
native machine code. microsoft's c2.exe and link.exe is included.
of course vb classes are more restricted than c++ classes, and with the
COM interface alone you are lost because you cannot inherit from them
but i would still say that is usable and object-orientated and not THAT
bad at all.
i already know weak typing from lisp so i know where to take care.
>VB would also be nothing without C. All of VB functionality is
>dependant on the underlying C code.
>
>C was is and always will be a high level assembler. That was its
>purpose. It has done well in that area. For some reason, people
>thought it would also be a good application language. It can
>certainly be used for application development, but that requires a lot
>of work. It is much better to use a language that is close to the
>problem domain rather than to the machine. A compiler can make the
>final code play nice with the machine.
hmm... VB cares only about the stack allocation scheme in importing DLL
functions and cares about COM interfaces (which IS crippled, we know).
but this doesn't depend on the language (c, c++, pascal, ...) at all the
dll, ocx or com server is written in. For example i tried VB, LISP and
Delphi ActiveX servers and DLL's - well, no lisp dll yet, but my lisp as
com server works okay.
in fact i'm trying now to use some win32 ocx with my lisp and building
an VB ActiveX server DLL which lets me use lisp together with VB and its
huge library of beautiful controls. i don't need CLIM or garnet just for
some quick and dirty graphics.
native callbacks are not supported yet, but with objects it works quite
okay. in summary, as long as you don't pass functions (events,
callbacks, methods) I would say that vb is nice.
I still have to test the new Corman Lisp if VB callbacks could be used
inside lisp and vice versa. it is too new and there're no COM docs nor
sources yet.
>I've looked at VB and found it to be quite crippled. Without a large
>box of COM objects, you can do nothing in it.
functional programming:
well, as said above you better not pass functions with VB over the
bridge of languages and COM. it should be doable as stated in the vb5
docs but i really don't want to try it out.
in fact i tried it out with the tutorial and it did work but the
countertest by creating my own sample didn't work at all. this is for
sure my personal limitation, may the same reason as my lack of
understanding of working with perl objects.
but you don't need any GOTO's, too much global vars and you may pass a
lot as functional arguments, ByRef and ByVal. i don't know the exact
term "functional programming" but in my naive interpretation it would
fit to "functional" usable.
dijkstra will stomp me into the ground for this lousy definition ;)
---
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html
The best way to promote lisp is to use it successfully.
i.e. write useful applications that solve some real problem.
If you can't use it sucessfully,
the second best way is to help others use it successfully.
i.e. write general tools and utilities.
I have a standing request for a JPEG image reader and writer
utility written in CommonLisp.
I also offer cold hard cash:
$500 to the first person that can deliver.
-Kelly Murray ···@intellimarket.com
On Tue, 03 Nov 1998 11:00:58 -0800, Kelly Murray
<···@IntelliMarket.Com> claimed or asked:
% I have a standing request for a JPEG image reader and writer
% utility written in CommonLisp.
% I also offer cold hard cash:
% $500 to the first person that can deliver.
The JDK 1.2b4 comes with JPEG encoding and decoding Java code written
by Kodak. The algorithm is there. I don't understand it because I
haven't really studied it. There is also the question of atrophied
math skills. Anyway, if it can be done in Java...
--
David Steuber (ver 1.31.2a)
http://www.david-steuber.com
To reply by e-mail, replace trashcan with david.
"Ignore reality there's nothing you can do about it..."
-- Natalie Imbruglia "Don't you think?"
>On Tue, 03 Nov 1998 11:00:58 -0800, Kelly Murray
><···@IntelliMarket.Com> claimed or asked:
>% I have a standing request for a JPEG image reader and writer
>% utility written in CommonLisp.
>% I also offer cold hard cash:
>% $500 to the first person that can deliver.
>
David Steuber "The Interloper" <········@david-steuber.com> wrote:
>The JDK 1.2b4 comes with JPEG encoding and decoding Java code written
>by Kodak. The algorithm is there. I don't understand it because I
>haven't really studied it. There is also the question of atrophied
>math skills. Anyway, if it can be done in Java...
There's a nice 20 page description of the decoding algorithm (with gofer
source code) at: http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/jeroen/
Jeroen Fokker, Functional Specification of the JPEG algorithm, and an
Implementation for Free. In: Programming Paradigms in Graphics,
Proceedings of the Eurographics workshop in Maastricht, the Netherlands,
september 1995. (R.C. Veltkamp and E.H.Blake, eds). Wien, Springer 1995,
pp. 102-120.
It's readable even if you don't do gofer. That's where i'd start.
John
In article <·················@digaudio.com>, Gregory Santos
<·····@digaudio.com> wrote:
> Hello, Lisp community.
...
> Given these conditions, my question to you is this: how
> can I, in the remainder of my career, best promote the
> use, understanding, and spread of Lisp as a useful,
> desirable, wonderful, and truly "mainstream" computing
> language?
We have a list of interesting projects at:
http://wilson.ai.mit.edu/cl-http/projects.html
There are a lot of ideas listed where Lisp in general and
CL-HTTP in particular can benefit. CL-HTTP is an
excellent way to promote Lisp and to bring your
Lisp applications to the world.
So, if your days are getting darker, you are frustrated
seeing C/Perl/whatever code being used, you are sitting
in front of your favorite Lisp machine and wonder
what piece of code to write and to contribute today -
then you might as well roll the dice and randomly pick
a project from this list. Your contributions then
will be carefully checked and incorporated into
the CL-HTTP distribution for the benefit of all the other
fellow Lisp hackers.
Some people already have donated time/sweat/nerves:
http://wilson.ai.mit.edu/cl-http/acknowledgments.html
Make sure, you make it on to this list. ;-)
--
http://www.lavielle.com/~joswig
··@wetware.com (Bill Coderre) writes:
> Understand the market. Put a product out that uses Lisp intelligently, and
> enables others to use Lisp. Ignore stupid whiny C++ bigots. Lather, rinse,
> repeat.
>
> IE. you have to find out WHAT users want to do...
I confess. I use MS Word to write some documents. The story is that I
am required to.
Now let's give some credit to MS. They went out and ask the USER: "Is
there any way we could improve the way we do bullets?" The USER
aswered: "Give me a nifty icon in the task bar, so that I can do them
more easily." The result, you now can do bullets from the task bar,
but they do not require a different style. So, if you are doing what
we sophisticated Dilberts think managers do with your documents, you
are home free, if you try to do something more complex (like undoing a
bullet or changing the numbering in a numbered list) you are bound to
waste time.
It also goes in politics. The politician (mostly conservative) goes
out and asks the VOTER: "What can I do for you?". The VOTER replies
without a thought: "Less taxes!". The middle-class VOTER who can
barely pay up bills gets much worse Public Schools and so do we all.
See a pattern? :) Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - (0)6 - 68 10 03 16, fax. +39 - (0)6 - 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it
Well I know we are busy, with little time for extracurricular programming.
If someone wanted to get a lisp program in the public view and make a little
money on the side, I get two or three request a week as the one I copied
below. The problem is the people who have written them are like me. That
is: 1). the program was written a part of our job for our hospitals use, 2)
the department head or heads that sponsored the programs think they own it
3) we don't really have time to support a user community, and 4) don't
really have time to port it to windows. As I have mentioned before in a
thread, this would be good ground to plow with lisp. They are a good fit.
See request below....Rusty (hmm didn't i read in the news group about a
brillant lisp programmer with some time?)
AS COPIED FROM -
PharmPK - Discussions about Pharmacokinetics
Pharmacodynamics and related topics
We are currently trying to find a Windows based Bayesian Forecasting
Pharmacokinetic Program that we can use in the Clinical Pharmacokinetic
Service of our teaching hospital. To date we have been using Abbottbase
PKS. We also hope to use this program in our undergraduate teaching
courses.
If anyone either knows of, or have recently evaluated such a program
could you please email me.
Thanks
Rohan Rasiah
__________________________________________________
Rohan Rasiah
Therapeutic Advisory Service
Mater Public Hospitals
Raymond Tce
South Brisbane 4101
AUSTRALIA
Phone +61 7 38408220
Fax +61 7 38401690
Email ·······@mater.org.au
---
Also see: http://www.cpb.uokhsc.edu/pkin/pkin.html
Christopher B. Browne <········@hex.net> wrote:
+---------------
| >Lisp is Turing complete, so it can do everything that Vbasic can do.
|
| So is TECO, and I wouldn't propose *that* as a scripting language to a
| newcomer to computing...
+---------------
No, but for an experienced TECO hacker it is (well, was) perfectly good
for "scripting". E.g., circa 1972 I wrote a mailing list/form letter merge
program (you know, one of those things that takes a mailing list in one hand
and a template form letter in the other and produces "Dear Mr. 3rd, ...")
in TECO (on a PDP-8, no less).
But these days I'd do it in Scheme\\\\\\ (oops! wrong n.g.) Common Lisp.
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, 8L-855 ····@sgi.com
Applied Networking http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
Silicon Graphics, Inc. Phone: 650-933-1673
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. FAX: 650-964-0811
Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
Bill Coderre wrote:
> Tack B:
> Create a beginner programming environment for Lisp that allows average
> people to create non-trivial programs that they actually care about. IE.
> If Lisp could do everything that Visual Basic does, people would write
> dumb little macros in it.
Actually Franz has already done this with ACL/Win 5.0 (a free version is now
available at their website). The interface is very similar to Delphi, and
writing simple GUIs is very nearly as easy. I say "very nearly" because the
Common Graphics event model makes it somewhat cumbersome to refer to one
control in a form in the event handler of another. A macro might make this
easier. Something like:
(with-controls (edit-1 edit-2)
..body..)
which would expand into
(let* ((parent (parent widget))
(edit-1 (find-widget parent :edit-1))
(edit-2 (find-widget parent :edit-2)))
..body..)
This quibble aside, I think Franz has done a wonderful job of presenting Lisp
beginners with a familiar interface that will let them write simple programs
quickly and allow them to gradually learn to appreciate Lisp's strengths in
writing complex programs. Well done!
Bruce Tobin wrote in message <·················@columbus.rr.com>...
>
>This quibble aside, I think Franz has done a wonderful job of presenting
Lisp
>beginners with a familiar interface that will let them write simple
programs
>quickly and allow them to gradually learn to appreciate Lisp's strengths in
>writing complex programs. Well done!
I agree. I just downloaded it and had a play. It's very Delphi/Visual Basic
like. I threw together a quick application that used DDE to communicate to
another windows program in no time - and that's using my very little lisp
knowledge (coming from a C++ and Visual Basic background with a little bit
of Dylan thrown in).
Chris.