From: Esa Onttonen
Subject: Recommended Lisp for a newbie
Date: 
Message-ID: <slrna71uq7.pva.eonttone@amadeus.siba.fi>
Hello! (And forgive me, I'm a Lisp-newbie...)

Lately I've become more and more interested with Lisp and now I'd like to
have your opinions on what Lisp implementation you would recommend. Since
I use both Linux (currently Red Hat 7.2) and Windows (98) a lot,
preferably something that would work on both environments.

I've read lots of Lisp-related pages on the web, old comp.lang.lisp posts
and have tried few CLs myself (LispWorks Personal Edition, CLISP). But I'm
confused about where to start. Probably it doesn't make such a difference
in the beginning where I am, but I'd like to use a system which I can also
use when my skills/needs grow. And it should be "free" as well.

Thanks in advance!

-- 


Esa Onttonen / ········@siba.fi / www.fiaskorecords.com
From: Jochen Schmidt
Subject: Re: Recommended Lisp for a newbie
Date: 
Message-ID: <a4r0b0$1qd$1@rznews2.rrze.uni-erlangen.de>
Esa Onttonen wrote:

> Hello! (And forgive me, I'm a Lisp-newbie...)
> 
> Lately I've become more and more interested with Lisp and now I'd like to
> have your opinions on what Lisp implementation you would recommend. Since
> I use both Linux (currently Red Hat 7.2) and Windows (98) a lot,
> preferably something that would work on both environments.
> 
> I've read lots of Lisp-related pages on the web, old comp.lang.lisp posts
> and have tried few CLs myself (LispWorks Personal Edition, CLISP). But I'm
> confused about where to start. Probably it doesn't make such a difference
> in the beginning where I am, but I'd like to use a system which I can also
> use when my skills/needs grow. And it should be "free" as well.

LispWorks Personal Edition is a really nice system (and "free" in the sense 
of "gratis") - so if you like it it is certainly good for learning CL.

The nice thing with Common Lisp is that it is big enough that you can 
easily write widely portable software. Using a compatibility library like 
"ACL-COMPAT" (which comes with "Portable AllegroServe" 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableaserve) you can even write code 
using sockets, multithreading or other implementation dependent stuff that 
runs on different lisp-systems and OSes.
Until now ACL-COMPAT supports CMUCL and LispWorks while MCL and Corman Lisp 
are underway.
I have rewritten the MP stuff for LispWorks and CMUCL in ACL-COMPAT last 
week to make it more compatible to the ACL API. (It supports now things 
like run-reasons or initial bindings for those who are interested...).

ciao,
Jochen

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