O'Reilly has a nice interview with the pragmatic programmers:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/06/24/pragmatic_programmers.html
For those collecting Lisp quotes, they make a couple of nice statements.
Dave Thomas:
"Java and C# are not really dynamic in any meaningful way. Memory
management is a small part of the picture, but the real gains in these
more dynamic languages come from different areas, particularly from a
flexible type model and from the ability to metaprogram.
Ultimately, it comes down to ease of expression. If I can express myself
in code at a level closer to the problem domain, then I'm going to be
more effective, and my code is likely to be easier to maintain and
extend. Paul Graham makes a big deal out of the way Lisp helped him
while building the software that became Yahoo Stores, and he's right.
These languages, applied properly, are a strategic advantage. I know
some companies are using them with great success. And you know --
they're keeping quiet about it."
hmmm. So _that_'s why there aren't a lot of "visible" Lisp applications
out there. They keep telling us it's all C++ ;-)
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> O'Reilly has a nice interview with the pragmatic programmers:
> http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/06/24/pragmatic_programmers.html
>
> For those collecting Lisp quotes, they make a couple of nice statements.
[ . . . ]
> Ultimately, it comes down to ease of expression. If I can express
> myself in code at a level closer to the problem domain, then I'm
> going to be more effective, and my code is likely to be easier to
> maintain and extend. Paul Graham makes a big deal out of the way
> Lisp helped him while building the software that became Yahoo
> Stores, and he's right. These languages, applied properly, are a
> strategic advantage. I know some companies are using them with great
> success. And you know -- they're keeping quiet about it."
Great quote, thanks. Your post reminded me of something that
really annoyed me on the O'Reilly site when I saw it some time ago and
which is still there in their book proposal guidelines
(http://oreilly.com/oreilly/author/writeforus_1101.html):
We're NOT looking for:
. . .
- Any books on LISP, LaTeX, or Web-based training.
I find it very disappointing that an otherwise impressive publisher
won't even consider proposals for Lisp books. Hopefully Mr. Seibel
will enjoy such success with "Practical Common Lisp" that O'Reilly
will reconsider.
Patrick
------------------------------------------------------------------------
S P Engineering, Inc. | The experts in large distributed systems
···@spe.com | design and implementation.
Patrick May <···@spe.com> wrote in message news:<··············@localhost.localdomain>...
> I find it very disappointing that an otherwise impressive publisher
> won't even consider proposals for Lisp books. Hopefully Mr. Seibel
> will enjoy such success with "Practical Common Lisp" that O'Reilly
> will reconsider.
Time will tell.
O'Reilly is like most businesses. They are interested in profit.
Given the margins in dead tree publishing, I guess the audiance just
isn't large enough to support more Lisp books. I'm not all that
surprised about LaTex either. They probably think all the important
points have been covered. Also O'Reilly really isn't in the same
class as houses like Prentice Hall or Addison Wesley. It just happens
to be better than Sam's or Que.
I wonder how the sales on PAIP and so forth are. I've got my copies
already. Although Keene's "A Programmer's Guide to CLOS" and
Kiczales' "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" are two dead trees that
I bought very recently. Having Graham's two books and PAIP give me
pretty good coverage. Then there is CLtL2 that I have in dead tree
and digital format and the CLHS in digital format.
I would like to think that Common Lisp is like a rising pheonix that
will be seen as a good candidate for general applications programming.
Irrespective of Lisp's traditional ties to AI, I think that Lisp has
a strong edge in this area. It has all the features of VHLLs such as
Python along with a more powerful macro system and the fact that it is
a compiled language in most implementations. You can say a lot with
very little code just like with a VHLL. You don't have to give up
performance to get the benefits. Win win as far as I can tell.
David Steuber schrieb:
> I would like to think that Common Lisp is like a rising pheonix that
> will be seen as a good candidate for general applications programming.
> Irrespective of Lisp's traditional ties to AI, I think that Lisp has
> a strong edge in this area. It has all the features of VHLLs such as
> Python along with a more powerful macro system and the fact that it is
> a compiled language in most implementations. You can say a lot with
> very little code just like with a VHLL. You don't have to give up
> performance to get the benefits. Win win as far as I can tell.
1) What does VHLL mean?
2) one could say that the absence of Pythons macro system is less
powerfull than CLs macro system
3) Python code is also compiled, but not natively
Andr�
--
Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> writes:
> 1) What does VHLL mean?
Very High Level Language
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (Google for info on each):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Andr� Thieme <······························@justmail.de> wrote:
+---------------
| David Steuber schrieb:
| > [Common Lisp] has all the features of VHLLs such as
| > Python along with a more powerful macro system and the fact that it is
| > a compiled language in most implementations. You can say a lot with
| > very little code just like with a VHLL.
|
| 1) What does VHLL mean?
+---------------
"Very-high-level language", originally used at a time when languages
such as Fortran, Algol, and (later) C were considered to be "high-level"
languages (HLLs). VHLL got used for other things which provided some
larger units of processing or data objects or being more declarative
than imperative, such as so-called 4GLs (e.g., RPG & other "program
generators"), database languages (e.g., SQL), logic programming (e.g.,
Prolog).
Recently, the popularity of "scripting" languages[1] has caused yet
another redifinition, to include in "VHLL" such things as the Bourne
Shell, Tcl, Python, Perl, or JavaScript [which are actually all fairly
*low*-level languages by modern standard, but which contain convenient
hooks for gluing code in other languages together].
Also see <URL:http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/HLL.html>, which
says:
VHLL stands for `Very-High-Level Language' and is used to describe a
{bondage-and-discipline} language that the speaker happens to like;
Prolog and Backus's FP are often called VHLLs.
-Rob
[1] See <URL:http://home.pacbell.net/ouster/scripting.html>
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote:
> I wonder how the sales on PAIP and so forth are. I've got my copies
> already.
I just ordered one today.
I would happily buy the book that comes with the cirCLe CD ... or the
one that comes with a multi-user, networked Movitz OS. :)
--
Karl A. Krueger <········@example.edu>
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Email address is spamtrapped. s/example/whoi/
"Outlook not so good." -- Magic 8-Ball Software Reviews