The following documents the conspiracy behind the decline of Lisp and
the disintegration of the USSR.
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~gb/cis655/Reading/gigo-1997-04.html
<grin>
From: Florian Weimer
Subject: Re: The Decline of Lisp and the Disintegration of the USSR
Date:
Message-ID: <877kaepdam.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>
Jeff Caldwell <·····@yahoo.com> writes:
> The following documents the conspiracy behind the decline of Lisp and
> the disintegration of the USSR.
>
> http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~gb/cis655/Reading/gigo-1997-04.html
Actually, Ada is not that bad, and it's facing troubles rather similar
to Lisp. It's being replaced by languages which are en vogue, and
such decisions aren't based on technical terms. 8-(
Fortunately for Ada, there is a free (as in freedom) compiler that has
substantial long-term commercial backing. I wish it were true for
Common Lisp as well...
Florian Weimer wrote:
> Jeff Caldwell <·····@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>
>>The following documents the conspiracy behind the decline of Lisp and
>>the disintegration of the USSR.
>>
>>http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~gb/cis655/Reading/gigo-1997-04.html
>
>
> Actually, Ada is not that bad, and it's facing troubles rather similar
> to Lisp. It's being replaced by languages which are en vogue, and
> such decisions aren't based on technical terms. 8-(
>
> Fortunately for Ada, there is a free (as in freedom) compiler that has
> substantial long-term commercial backing. I wish it were true for
> Common Lisp as well...
The situation isn't so bad for Common Lisp either. There are plenty of
free Common Lisp implementations, some of which reportedly work
extremely well and are continuously improved upon (cmucl, sbcl, clisp,
openmcl, GNU CL).
Furthermore, there are free versions of industrial-strength commercial
implementations (Allegro Common Lisp, LispWorks, Corman Lisp, Macintosh
Common Lisp). You usually are not allowed to use those free versions for
deployment, but some of them are not too expensive either. And in some
areas good support is much more important than free availability.
So there's plenty to choose from and at least one of these offerings is
likely to suit your needs.
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
···············@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de R�merstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
From: Florian Weimer
Subject: Re: The Decline of Lisp and the Disintegration of the USSR
Date:
Message-ID: <87he9inoqo.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>
Pascal Costanza <········@web.de> writes:
>> Fortunately for Ada, there is a free (as in freedom) compiler that
>> has substantial long-term commercial backing. I wish it were true
>> for Common Lisp as well...
>
> The situation isn't so bad for Common Lisp either. There are plenty of
> free Common Lisp implementations, some of which reportedly work
> extremely well and are continuously improved upon (cmucl, sbcl, clisp,
> openmcl, GNU CL).
I agree, and the development process is much more open (at least for
those projects whoise mailing lists I'm browsing). I really
appreciate this.
This has been referenced often enough in the thread that I want to make
certain that everyone noted the <grin> line I included in the original
post, about 30 lines down from the link. The linked-to article is
parody, of course, a delightful tongue-in-cheek look at Ada. It is
interesting that Ada is having troubles similar to Lisp. I would have
thought the Department of Defense standardizing on Ada would have
eliminated those concerns. Apparently not. I was hoping Ada would still
be around for me to look at after I finally master Lisp. Do you think
Ada will be around in 20 years?
Jeff
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Florian Weimer wrote:
>
>> Jeff Caldwell <·····@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>> The following documents the conspiracy behind the decline of Lisp and
>>> the disintegration of the USSR.
>>>
>>> http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~gb/cis655/Reading/gigo-1997-04.html
>>
>>Actually, Ada is not that bad, and it's facing troubles rather similar
>>to Lisp. It's being replaced by languages which are en vogue, and
>>such decisions aren't based on technical terms. 8-(
From: Florian Weimer
Subject: Re: The Decline of Lisp and the Disintegration of the USSR
Date:
Message-ID: <877kacm0pw.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>
Jeff Caldwell <·····@yahoo.com> writes:
> I would have thought the Department of Defense standardizing on Ada
> would have eliminated those concerns.
The Ada mandate was dropped a couple of years ago, and Ada, though
designed as a general purpose language for almost everything, has
never been anything but a niche language (admittedly, it fills certain
niches quite well!).
> Apparently not.
No, not really. Just read comp.lang.ada, there are many posters who
complain that they have trouble selling Ada to their peers or
superiors. Often, new projects choose other languages for dubious
reasons, even if Ada experience is available. Quite a strong
indicator of the problems are two phenomena on comp.lang.ada, which
are shared by comp.lang.lisp, I think: Posters claiming that "If
vendors would only do X, than Ada/Lisp would be gain market share.",
or "We need a desktop/server operating system written in Ada/Lisp to
save the world.". 8-)
> I was hoping Ada would still be around for me to look at after I
> finally master Lisp. Do you think Ada will be around in 20 years?
Ada will certainly be around, much like COBOL. 8-)
There are only very few high-level languages which are truly extinct
after having seen substantial commercial use.
From: James A. Crippen
Subject: Re: The Decline of Lisp and the Disintegration of the USSR
Date:
Message-ID: <m3of3nc1o5.fsf@kappa.unlambda.com>
Florian Weimer <··@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
> Ada will certainly be around, much like COBOL. 8-)
>
> There are only very few high-level languages which are truly extinct
> after having seen substantial commercial use.
Even PL/I has its uses still. Talk to anyone working with AS/400 type
machines. Of course, you're likely to find COBOL there as well.
And naturally there's the FORTRAN that wouldn't die.
'james
--
James A. Crippen <james at unlambda.com> Lambda Unlimited
61.2204N, -149.8964W Recursion 'R' Us
Anchorage, Alaska, USA, Earth Y = \f.(\x.f(xx))(\x.f(xx))
On Thu, 03 Apr 2003 10:42:03 +0200, Florian Weimer <··@deneb.enyo.de>
wrote:
> or "We need a desktop/server operating system written in Ada/Lisp to
> save the world.". 8-)
You can already do that with most current Lisp systems :)
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <·······@mclink.it>