Perhaps I missed this elsewhere, but does anyone else share my
suspicion that the extensive early use of Lisp on DoD projects that
can't be discussed "for reasons of national security" could be
partially responsible for whatever endangerment it may face now?
Any guesses on what percentage of Lisp's market share are DoD projects
account for today?
Mark Watson <·····@markwatson.com> wrote in message news:<················@markwatson.com>...
> The July issue of WiRED Magazine has a cool two page spread on the
> history of programming languages.
>
> The only problem: they have Lisp and Smalltalk
> listed as "endangered species" :-(
>
> -Mark
>
> -- Mark Watson, author and Java consultant
> -- www.markwatson.com - Open Source and Open Content
> -- www.knowledgebooks.com - Commercial artificial intelligence software
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Lisp as a tool of the DoD (was Re: WiRED: Lisp and Smalltalk on "Endangered Species" list)
Date:
Message-ID: <ubsa791s6.fsf@grant.org>
>>>>> On 18 Jun 2002 20:58:32 -0700, clabbergrrrl ("clabbergrrrl") writes:
clabbergrrrl> Perhaps I missed this elsewhere, but does anyone else share my
clabbergrrrl> suspicion that the extensive early use of Lisp on DoD projects that
clabbergrrrl> can't be discussed "for reasons of national security" could be
clabbergrrrl> partially responsible for whatever endangerment it may face now?
I don't know what you're getting at, but when Lisp was briefly a
popular language in the mid 1980s, many of the people pushing it
were from places that did lots of DOD work, and there were many
applications. Prior to, and during that time, Lisp development,
including the creation of Common Lisp, was mostly funded by DOD,
for example through ARPA. Much of that activity was related to AI.
Those applications were very successful. Some of them still being
used today. Lisp in the military arena is a success story.
I remember watching Operation Desert Storm on TV, and thinking,
"Gee, I know that those bomber sorties are being scheduled by Lisp
programs, the strategic planning is being done on Lisp programs,
the commanders are communicating over networks designed by Lisp programs,
and there are probably many other Lisp applications in use in this whole
thing that I don't happen to know about. Oh, and by the way, the TV
network news graphics behind Dan Rather and those are guys
were created and rendered by Lisp programs, too."
More or less all of it was on Symbolics Lisp Machines.
······@grant.org (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in message news:<·············@grant.org>...
> >>>>> On 18 Jun 2002 20:58:32 -0700, clabbergrrrl ("clabbergrrrl") writes:
>
> clabbergrrrl> Perhaps I missed this elsewhere, but does anyone else share my
> clabbergrrrl> suspicion that the extensive early use of Lisp on DoD projects that
> clabbergrrrl> can't be discussed "for reasons of national security" could be
> clabbergrrrl> partially responsible for whatever endangerment it may face now?
>
> I don't know what you're getting at, but when Lisp was briefly a
> popular language in the mid 1980s, many of the people pushing it
> were from places that did lots of DOD work, and there were many
> applications.
One point I'm getting at is that if the technical aspects of these
applications can't be discussed publicly, it's much more difficult for
them to be hyped publicly, and, more importantly, much more difficult
for them to be shared. That's Bad for the Lisp community, Bad for
Lisp's market share.
> Prior to, and during that time, Lisp development,
> including the creation of Common Lisp, was mostly funded by DOD,
> for example through ARPA. Much of that activity was related to AI.
> Those applications were very successful. Some of them still being
> used today. Lisp in the military arena is a success story.
That depends on how one defines 'success' ...
> I remember watching Operation Desert Storm on TV, and thinking,
> "Gee, I know that those bomber sorties are being scheduled by Lisp
> programs, the strategic planning is being done on Lisp programs,
> the commanders are communicating over networks designed by Lisp programs,
> and there are probably many other Lisp applications in use in this whole
> thing that I don't happen to know about. Oh, and by the way, the TV
> network news graphics behind Dan Rather and those are guys
> were created and rendered by Lisp programs, too."
Suppose, hypothetically speaking, we were to discover that the
September 11 attacks were in some measure a direct retaliation against
our reckless deployment of sortie queuing programs - it's not that
implausible, is it? Would you then still characterize their timely
production as a success story?
> More or less all of it was on Symbolics Lisp Machines.
No question, there were and still are some technically brilliant
applications done on Symbolics Lisp machines. Most of us will never
learn about them though if those machines happen to belong to DoD.
I'm saying that's a problem. It can also be a problem if Lisp
programmers are unwilling or unable to anticipate the social
consequences of implementing their programs.
From: Joel Ray Holveck
Subject: Re: Lisp as a tool of the DoD (was Re: WiRED: Lisp and Smalltalk on "Endangered Species" list)
Date:
Message-ID: <y7cr8j3ukbq.fsf@sindri.juniper.net>
> One point I'm getting at is that if the technical aspects of these
> applications can't be discussed publicly, it's much more difficult for
> them to be hyped publicly, and, more importantly, much more difficult
> for them to be shared. That's Bad for the Lisp community, Bad for
> Lisp's market share.
Harlequin's "Myths and Legends" paper (I may have that title wrong;
poke around on lisp.org) makes a similar claim: that companies that
use Lisp keep it under wraps, because they feel that they have a
competitive advantage.
Of course, this is impossible to prove or disprove, but they do give
one example of a customer who decided to let the secret out.
Cheers,
joelh
From: Rob Warnock
Subject: Re: Lisp as a tool of the DoD (was Re: WiRED: Lisp and Smalltalk on "Endangered Species" list)
Date:
Message-ID: <aesbgi$2j8oi$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Joel Ray Holveck <·····@juniper.net> wrote:
+---------------
| > One point I'm getting at is that if the technical aspects of these
| > applications can't be discussed publicly, it's much more difficult for
| > them to be hyped publicly, and, more importantly, much more difficult
| > for them to be shared. That's Bad for the Lisp community, Bad for
| > Lisp's market share.
|
| Harlequin's "Myths and Legends" paper (I may have that title wrong;
| poke around on lisp.org) makes a similar claim: that companies that
| use Lisp keep it under wraps, because they feel that they have a
| competitive advantage.
+---------------
Paul Grahamis is very explicit about this w.r.t. to ViaWeb
(a.k.a. Yahoo! Store). From his arrticle "Beating the Averages"
<URL:http://www.paulgraham.com/lib/paulgraham/sec.txt>:
The Secret Weapon
...
If other companies didn't want to use Lisp, so much the better.
It might give us a technological edge, and we needed all the help
we could get.
...
Our hypothesis was that if we wrote our software in Lisp, we'd
be able to get features done faster than our competitors, and
also to do things in our software that they couldn't do.
...
It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of
secret weapon-- that we were decoding their Enigma traffic or
something. In fact we did have a secret weapon, but it was simpler
than they realized. No one was leaking news of their features
to us. We were just able to develop software faster than anyone
thought possible.
...
And so, I'm a little embarrassed to say, I never said anything
publicly about Lisp while we were working on Viaweb. We never
mentioned it to the press, and if you searched for Lisp on our Web
site, all you'd find were the titles of two books in my bio. This
was no accident. A startup should give its competitors as little
information as possible. If they didn't know what language our
software was written in, or didn't care, I wanted to keep it that
way.
Now many might say he made up for his silence later, but at the time...
-Rob
-----
Rob Warnock, 30-3-510 <····@sgi.com>
SGI Network Engineering <http://www.rpw3.org/>
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Phone: 650-933-1673
Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA
[Note: ·········@sgi.com and ········@sgi.com aren't for humans ]
From: Christopher C. Stacy
Subject: Re: Lisp as a tool of the DoD (was Re: WiRED: Lisp and Smalltalk on "Endangered Species" list)
Date:
Message-ID: <u8z5bow3p.fsf@grant.org>
>>>>> On 19 Jun 2002 11:45:48 -0700, clabbergrrrl ("clabbergrrrl") writes:
clabbergrrrl> Suppose, hypothetically speaking, we were to discover
clabbergrrrl> that the September 11 attacks were in some measure a
clabbergrrrl> direct retaliation against our reckless deployment of
clabbergrrrl> sortie queuing programs - it's not that implausible, is it?
It's not plausible, and I therefore conclude that you're a babbling troll.
From: Joe Marshall
Subject: Re: Lisp as a tool of the DoD (was Re: WiRED: Lisp and Smalltalk on "Endangered Species" list)
Date:
Message-ID: <Zl6Q8.12168$EP.114@sccrnsc03>
"clabbergrrrl" <············@hotmail.com> wrote in message
·································@posting.google.com...
>
> Suppose, hypothetically speaking, we were to discover that the
> September 11 attacks were in some measure a direct retaliation against
> our reckless deployment of sortie queuing programs - it's not that
> implausible, is it?
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