On 27 Feb 2001 10:00:55 -0500, ·······@stsci.edu (John M. Adams) wrote:
> operations. One of these is a scheduling application that has been
> quite successful, so much so that it is being used for several
> observatories other than our own.
Which observatories?
> Planning is underway for a Next Generation Space Telescope
> (www.ngst.stsci.edu). Those currently responsible for software
> strategy believe that using lisp on this project would be a mistake
I would appreciate it if you could let us know the final decision, whether
it's favorable to Lisp or not.
> In addition to this, we need a way to show that lisp is, in fact, used
> fairly frequently to solve hard problems.
In the field of space exploration, you may check the success story of the
RAX (Remote Agent Experiment) software, which is written in Common Lisp and
flew on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft:
http://rax.arc.nasa.gov/
RAX was chosen as 1999 NASA Software of the Year:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codei/swy99win.html
> We have a funding source for colloquia speakers and would like to
> invite someone from outside the institute to speak on current
> industrial lisp applications. If you think you might be interested,
You may also contact Peter Norvig, who led(?) the RAX team.
> I would also like to amass a list of current industrial lisp projects
I recently sent a few tens of new entries to the maintainer of ALU's
industrial applications section, but I don't know how many of them have
been added:
http://www.alu.org/table/commercial-use.htm
> and technical contacts for them. I appreciate that many of these
> applications will involve proprietary concerns. Perhaps given that we
If part of the information you will gather does not involve proprietary
concerns, it would be a great service if you could share that part.
Good luck,
Paolo - Lisper apprentice and amateur astronomer
--
EncyCMUCLopedia * Extensive collection of CMU Common Lisp documentation
http://cvs2.cons.org:8000/cmucl/doc/EncyCMUCLopedia/
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
> On 27 Feb 2001 10:00:55 -0500, ·······@stsci.edu (John M. Adams) wrote:
>
> > operations. One of these is a scheduling application that has been
> > quite successful, so much so that it is being used for several
> > observatories other than our own.
>
> Which observatories?
I know we've done customizations for the following at various times.
http://sirtf.caltech.edu/
http://chandra.harvard.edu/index.html
http://www.eso.org/
http://www.naoj.org/
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/index.shtml
--
John M. Adams
From: Larry Kramer
Subject: Re: Selling lisp to the Next Generation Space Telescope Project
Date:
Message-ID: <3A9E5F21.22B5DAE4@cs.cmu.edu>
"John M. Adams" wrote:
>
> Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it> writes:
>
> > On 27 Feb 2001 10:00:55 -0500, ·······@stsci.edu (John M. Adams) wrote:
> >
> > > operations. One of these is a scheduling application that has been
> > > quite successful, so much so that it is being used for several
> > > observatories other than our own.
> >
> > Which observatories?
>
> I know we've done customizations for the following at various times.
>
> http://sirtf.caltech.edu/
> http://chandra.harvard.edu/index.html
> http://www.eso.org/
> http://www.naoj.org/
> http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/index.shtml
>
> --
> John M. Adams
John Michael's understating things a little. The FUSE project alone,
for instance, has been a multi-person year development and maintenance
project. The Spike scheduling system supports the day to day long term
planning and short term scheduling of that observatory. Other of the
projects above varied from small customizations to multi-month efforts.
Having worked (in the recent past) as a member of the Spike development
team, I'd like to weigh in with my thoughts on recruiting Lisp software
developers. (I won't lend my opinion on whether Lisp is the right
language for the application, as to me that is an open and shut case.)
First of all, I think it's true that it is hard to find and hire Lisp
developers. There just aren't that many of us around. In addition
we sometimes had problems recruiting talented software developers
who did not know Lisp, when we told them that a big part of their job
would be programming in Lisp.
That having been said, we also had a number of positive experiences
working with open-minded software developers that were willing or
even eager to learn Lisp. They came up to speed quickly in the
language, and has already been pointed out, the Lisp learning curve
is much shorter than the learning curve of the highly technical
application itself.
Lastly, there have been a number of people over the years, myself
included, that were attracted to working on some of the software
systems at STScI, *because* they are written in Lisp, and not despite
it.
Larry