Hello all,
I'm starting a college course in the nextr few weeks and have been told that
programming will be centering around LISP and ALGOL for the first year.
I have to admit that I had heard of these languages, and once even saw some
code ! but that was about it. At present I am a web site developer mainly
using ASP to present T-SQL info, so I'm expecting something
different.........
Could anyone here spare the time to answer these couple of questions? I'd be
very grateful. - If these appear on an FAQ, then I appologise, I will look
out for the posting of it or the url.
1. Is LISP used in a commercial environment, and if so what sort of
environment ?
2. What compiler would you recomend ?
3. What texts (if any) would you recomend
4. What, in your opinion, is the most important thing about LISP you need to
get your head round to understand it properly.
I understand these questions may be relative, but before I start the course
I think the info would be useful, if you think I should have asked different
questions then please let me know what I should have asked, and preferably
the answer to go with it.
Thanks
Paul
In article <·····················@stones>, "Gopher"
<······@gopher.force9.co.uk> wrote:
> Could anyone here spare the time to answer these couple of questions? I'd be
> very grateful. - If these appear on an FAQ, then I appologise, I will look
> out for the posting of it or the url.
>
> 1. Is LISP used in a commercial environment, and if so what sort of
> environment ?
There are a lot of Common Lisp systems - free and commercial.
> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
Depends on what OS and machine you are using.
http://www.lisp.org/ has more info.
If you have a specific question post it here.
> 3. What texts (if any) would you recomend
See http://www.lisp.org/table/learn.htm about learning Lisp.
> 4. What, in your opinion, is the most important thing about LISP you need to
> get your head round to understand it properly.
Free your mind.
--
Rainer Joswig, Hamburg, Germany
Email: ·············@corporate-world.lisp.de
Web: http://corporate-world.lisp.de/
Gopher writes:
> 1. Is LISP used in a commercial environment, and if so what sort of
> environment ?
Lots of people use it commercially, and there are several vendors. A
trivial browse through yahoo or google or some such should find them.
> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
For experimenting, I like CLISP, though it only compiles to byte-code.
I've done some numeric work with CMUCL as well, and was impressed by
its speed. Those are the best two free implementations, AFAIK.
> 3. What texts (if any) would you recomend
I have Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp, which I like. One of its
examples is a basic HTML-generation program, which might help.
Norvig's AI book is fun, but perhaps not the best generic introduction
to CL.
> 4. What, in your opinion, is the most important thing about LISP you need to
> get your head round to understand it properly.
Hm. No idea. Don't get too caught up in the heavily-recursive
examples common in textbooks. That style solves some problems well,
but for some problems it's more trouble than it is worth. That's not
all there is to lisp.
--
Johann Hibschman ······@physics.berkeley.edu
In article <·····················@stones>, ······@gopher.force9.co.uk
says...
> Hello all,
>
> I'm starting a college course in the nextr few weeks and have been told that
> programming will be centering around LISP and ALGOL for the first year.
>
> I have to admit that I had heard of these languages, and once even saw some
> code ! but that was about it. At present I am a web site developer mainly
> using ASP to present T-SQL info, so I'm expecting something
> different.........
>
> Could anyone here spare the time to answer these couple of questions? I'd be
> very grateful. - If these appear on an FAQ, then I appologise, I will look
> out for the posting of it or the url.
>
The best place to start is www.lisp.org
> 1. Is LISP used in a commercial environment, and if so what sort of
> environment ?
yes, you will find some list of references under www.lisp.org and
www.franz.com
> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
look at www.franz.com for a free development environment in a very good
quality. A list of other ones under www.lisp.org
> 3. What texts (if any) would you recomend
I recommend you to start with a very good online course about the basics
of lisp:
http://www.psychologie.uni-trier.de:8000/projects/ELM/elmart.html
A good book to start is
ANSI Common Lisp from Paul Graham
For advanced topics (essential to understand why Common Lisp is so great)
On Lisp from Paul Graham
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol (meta level for OO in Common Lisp)
Those 2 last book are more for advanced users, I would recommend you to
read them after getting used to the language, but dont forget them!!!
> I understand these questions may be relative, but before I start the course
> I think the info would be useful, if you think I should have asked different
> questions then please let me know what I should have asked, and preferably
> the answer to go with it.
Good luck...
>
> Thanks
>
> Paul
>
>
>
Just like to say thank you to all that answered my post, both here on the ng
and personally, it seems that for most of the questions you seem to agree
with each other (which is nice!), so I will be following that advice, I have
found out today that I will not be studying LISP until the 2nd semester, so
that gives me about 4 months to learn what I can, from the replies I've had
to my first post I feel this is a good group to keep in touch with, so if
you don't mind the odd newbie post I'll no doubt be posting here again.
Thanks again
Paul
* "Gopher" == Gopher <······@gopher.force9.co.uk> writes:
Gopher> Hello all, I'm starting a college course in the nextr few
Gopher> weeks and have been told that programming will be centering
Gopher> around LISP and ALGOL for the first year.
At least someone got it right! I mean that there is Lisp and there are
other programming languages :)
Gopher> 1. Is LISP used in a commercial environment, and if so what
Gopher> sort of environment ?
Yes, it is; not too often for desktop applications (you wouldn't find
a popular spreadsheet written in Lisp, although its actually
possible), but it is used often enough in heavyweight processing
behind the scenes (see store.yahoo.com shop creation engine for
instance).
Gopher> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
For unixen I'd suggest CMU CL+ILISP+Emacs,
for win32 - Corman Lisp or CLISP+ILISP+NTEmacs.
ILISP (ilisp.cons.org) is a glue code that makes Emacs a Lisp IDE.
Gopher> 3. What texts (if any) would you recomend
Well, people in this NG usually suggest _ANSI_Common_Lisp_ by Paul
Graham as a textbook for beginners. As I never seen it, I'd also
recommend _Successful_Lisp_, an online tutorial by David Lamkins
(don't have the URL handy, so check it through Google).
Gopher> 4. What, in your opinion, is the most important thing about
Gopher> LISP you need to get your head round to understand it
Gopher> properly.
Rainer replied on this already (though it may sound a bit punkish :)
--
Eugene Zaikonnikov
Hello!
In article <··············@localhost.localdomain>,
Eugene Zaikonnikov <······@cit.org.by> wrote:
>[...]
>Gopher> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
>For unixen I'd suggest CMU CL+ILISP+Emacs,
You're writing too generally. I believe, you'd call OpenBSD a "unix"
in the sense of that sentence, too. However, I haven't got cmucl to
run there. There are no native OpenBSD binaries. I tried both the
Linux and FreeBSD binaries in binary emulation mode. The linux binaries
crash immediately, the FreeBSD ones run till the first GC, then they
either enter some very strange error or fill all memory bringing the
system down through extensive thrashing.
However, clisp runs and ecls too (which is much more easily bootstrapped
than cmucl or sbcl).
>[...]
Kind regards,
Hannah.
* "Hannah" == Hannah Schroeter <······@schlund.de> writes:
Hannah> Hello! In article <··············@localhost.localdomain>,
Hannah> Eugene Zaikonnikov <······@cit.org.by> wrote:
>> [...]
Gopher> 2. What compiler would you recomend ?
>> For unixen I'd suggest CMU CL+ILISP+Emacs,
Hannah> You're writing too generally. I believe, you'd call OpenBSD a
Hannah> "unix" in the sense of that sentence, too. However, I haven't
Hannah> got cmucl to run there. There are no native OpenBSD
Hannah> binaries. I tried both the Linux and FreeBSD binaries in
Ok, I stay corrected. Basically when I wrote that post it seemed to me
correct to refer Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris things as unixes, rather than
name each separately; in no way I meant that term 'unix' is restricted
to these systems only, or that CMUCL runs on all existing flavours of
unix.
Best regards,
Eugene Zaikonnikov.
Hello!
In article <··············@rainbow.studorg.tuwien.ac.at>,
Clemens Heitzinger <········@ag.or.at> wrote:
>[...]
>SBCL 0.6.7 runs on OpenBSD.
I've just looked and found a binary distribution at sourceforge. Wow,
many thanks! Because with source only I didn't know how to bootstrap...
>How did get clisp to run on OpenBSD? It would be great if the patches
>would be included into the clisp distribution/cvs tree.
It's very easy, I'll just include the very short patches against
clisp-2000-03-06 here.
>Yours,
>Clemens
Regards,
Hannah.
The Makefile was made with:
# ./makemake --prefix=/usr/local/clisp --with-readline --with-gettext --with-dynamic-ffi --with-export-syscalls --with-module=wildcard --with-module=regexp --with-module=clx
The diffs:
diff -urN clisp-2000-03-06.orig/src/lispbibl.d clisp-2000-03-06.openbsd/src/lispbibl.d
--- clisp-2000-03-06.orig/src/lispbibl.d Tue Feb 29 23:22:55 2000
+++ clisp-2000-03-06.openbsd/src/lispbibl.d Tue Jun 27 19:02:22 2000
@@ -171,7 +171,7 @@
#define MC680X0
#define MC680Y0
#endif
- #if defined(i386) || defined(__i386) || defined(_I386)
+ #if defined(i386) || defined(__i386) || defined(_I386) || defined(__i386__)
#define I80386
#endif
#if defined(sparc) || defined(__sparc__)
@@ -657,7 +657,7 @@
#if defined(MC680X0)
#define STACK_register "a4" # h�chstes Adressregister nach sp=A7,fp=A6/A5
#endif
- #if defined(I80386) && !defined(DYNAMIC_MODULES)
+ #if defined(I80386) && !defined(DYNAMIC_MODULES) && !defined(__OpenBSD__)
# Ist DYNAMIC_MODULES definiert, werden externe Module als PIC
# compiliert, weswegen dann %ebx schon verbraucht ist.
#if (__GNUC__ >= 2) # Die Namen der Register haben sich ver�ndert
diff -urN clisp-2000-03-06.orig/src/posixmisc.d clisp-2000-03-06.openbsd/src/posixmisc.d
--- clisp-2000-03-06.orig/src/posixmisc.d Tue Jan 25 22:45:38 2000
+++ clisp-2000-03-06.openbsd/src/posixmisc.d Tue Jun 27 18:32:51 2000
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
#else
pushSTACK(NIL); count++;
#endif
-#ifdef _SC_THREAD_THREADS_MAX
+#if defined(_SC_THREAD_THREADS_MAX) && !defined(__OpenBSD__)
SC_S(_SC_THREAD_THREADS_MAX);
#else
pushSTACK(NIL); count++;
······@schlund.de (Hannah Schroeter) writes:
> Hello!
>
[ Context: running under OpenBSD ]
>
> However, clisp runs and ecls too (which is much more easily bootstrapped
> than cmucl or sbcl).
Quick note: SBCL is not difficult to build on the supported
platforms, but it takes some time (~2 hours on my K6-2/450/UWSCSI
home machine; ~50 mins on my PIII/667/UDMA work machine).
On the other hand, SBCL still lacks some of the subsystems
that come with CMUCL (CLX, CLM, ...)
--
Raymond Wiker
·············@fast.no
Hello!
In article <··············@raw.grenland.fast.no>,
Raymond Wiker <·············@fast.no> wrote:
> Quick note: SBCL is not difficult to build on the supported
>platforms, but it takes some time (~2 hours on my K6-2/450/UWSCSI
>home machine; ~50 mins on my PIII/667/UDMA work machine).
> On the other hand, SBCL still lacks some of the subsystems
>that come with CMUCL (CLX, CLM, ...)
I tried to bootstrap sbcl, however there I failed because I have no
supported build lisp (that was my problem in the beginning). My tries were
with 0.6.6. Now, I saw the OpenBSD binaries for 0.6.7 on sourceforge, so
at least I have sbcl here now!
With the lacks: It's better than nothing (and I still have no running
cmucl here). If I want to experiment with clx, I still can revert to
clisp or try to pull it over from the cmucl sources. (or is that difficult?)
Kind regards,
Hannah.
······@schlund.de (Hannah Schroeter) writes:
> Hello!
>
> In article <··············@raw.grenland.fast.no>,
> Raymond Wiker <·············@fast.no> wrote:
>
> > Quick note: SBCL is not difficult to build on the supported
> >platforms, but it takes some time (~2 hours on my K6-2/450/UWSCSI
> >home machine; ~50 mins on my PIII/667/UDMA work machine).
>
> > On the other hand, SBCL still lacks some of the subsystems
> >that come with CMUCL (CLX, CLM, ...)
>
> I tried to bootstrap sbcl, however there I failed because I have no
> supported build lisp (that was my problem in the beginning). My tries were
> with 0.6.6. Now, I saw the OpenBSD binaries for 0.6.7 on sourceforge, so
> at least I have sbcl here now!
>
> With the lacks: It's better than nothing (and I still have no running
> cmucl here). If I want to experiment with clx, I still can revert to
> clisp or try to pull it over from the cmucl sources. (or is that difficult?)
I actually have CLX running under SBCL, using a set of files
pulled from a CMUCL distribution and modified somewhat. I can send you
a diff, or the modified files, if that's of interest.
--
Raymond Wiker
·············@fast.no