Statements:
1- "The history of genetic programming started with
Lisp s-expressions but as you all know Lisp has its problems,
it is slow so programs were converted to C, C++, Java, etc."
2- "Lisp has a nasty feature called garbage collection
and it can stop all its operations while trying to do
something..."
Context of statements:
1- During an AI class, talking about evolutionary algorithms,
genetic programming, etc.
2- During another AI class, talking about the real-time
performance of expert systems, knowledge-based systems, etc.
Who said?
- A respected AI proffessor.
Who were the audience?
- Approximately 30 graduate students attending to the AI course
which is a part of Computer Engineering Master's Degree programme
at one of the top 3 universities in Turkey.
Now I've heard that people used to say "Lisp is loved by
professors at the universities..." I guess this is a counter
example.
The thing is that all those intelligent boys and girls who
had computer engineering education for at least 4 years
and will be working in important organizations in the
future, they all listened to the professor and nodded
their heads as a sign of approval, after all the man was
their professor, he programmed lots of applications in AI
and he was supposed to know what he was talking about, wasn't
he?
I record these kinds of events as perfect examples of
creating the roots of prejudice. Now can you imagine me
giving one of those guys a copy of "Practical Lisp" or "On Lisp"
or some other important book related to the subject?
Another example from another university:
- A couple of CS students were protesting the course program
claiming that the courses which use Lisp and Scheme as implementation
languages for theoretical subjects discussed must abandon
those languages and start giving examples in C language
(because DOOM3, the linux kernel, etc. was all written in C
and this made the language THE choice of the best programmers).
These three events made me think over and over again. Looks
like things aren't very bright on this part of the world. I'm
just a beginner and I don't have much to say, all I can say
is that once you learn something it is very very difficult to
forget it and once a well respected man makes some negative
claims on some aspects of something this will be carried by
his listeners to others in the community so its effect will
span a wider audience than intended leading to some echo effect
--
Emre Sevinc
eMBA Software Developer
Istanbul Bilgi University
http://www.bilgi.edu.tr
http://www.bilgiemba.net
Cognitive Science Student
http://www.cogsci.boun.edu.tr
Actively engaged in:
http://ileriseviye.org -- Advanced level technical articles
http://fazlamesai.net -- /. style geek site in Turkish (better than /.)
http://cazci.com -- All about jazz
From: Neo-LISPer
Subject: Re: Do academics really love Lisp? I doubt!
Date:
Message-ID: <87zn27a2va.fsf@yahoo.com>
Emre Sevinc <·····@bilgi.edu.tr> writes:
> Who were the audience?
>
> - Approximately 30 graduate students attending to the AI course
> which is a part of Computer Engineering Master's Degree programme
> at one of the top 3 universities in Turkey.
Sorry, but Turkey doesn't count. You people haven't even faked the
moon landings yet.
Emre Sevinc <·····@bilgi.edu.tr> wrote in message news:<··············@bilgi.edu.tr>...
> [snip]
> These three events made me think over and over again. Looks
> like things aren't very bright on this part of the world.
In academia, though, you can write your projects in Lisp if you want
to. Colleagues told me I was crazy, and was writing in a language no
one else could use. But I got grants.
Also, Lisp was invented in academia, and I think it still has that
flavor. Some of the great textbooks were written for courses at MIT,
not by the "Learn XXX in 21 Days" people. If I remember, "On Lisp"
was written partly when Graham had an academic position.
Firstly, I have to say that AI uses (or used) primarily two languages -
lisp and prolog. In Europe was prefered prolog, in USA lisp.
Knowledge of lisp (functional), prolog (declarative)
and imperative (c, pascal) techniques seems to me as a must in AI.
To your statements:
1. It's not true, really :)) Minimally compared to java,
programs in C and C++ can benefit from not using garbage collector.
Lisp can be better because when lisp program ends you still have access
to produced data structures, can run changed program again but not create (and
compute) unchanged data again - this is a big advantage !
2. Same true for java, python and other higher languages. It is a must
today - everybody hates SEGV.
Other thing is that commerial lisps are little expensive, best-known
allegro costed around 3000$. Free lisps miss often some things - like
a portability, threads, guis, unicode support ...
I also see input of java in AI - especially in multi-agent systems. It
is meants as a language in which you can't make fatal error.
Jan Gregor
Emre Sevinc <·····@bilgi.edu.tr> writes:
> Now I've heard that people used to say "Lisp is loved by
> professors at the universities..." I guess this is a counter
> example.
>
> The thing is that all those intelligent boys and girls who
> had computer engineering education for at least 4 years
> and will be working in important organizations in the
> future, they all listened to the professor and nodded
> their heads as a sign of approval, after all the man was
> their professor, he programmed lots of applications in AI
> and he was supposed to know what he was talking about, wasn't
> he?
Well, you really have to ask yourself: what am I doing about this?
Posting to c.l.l. is not a good answer. If this is in a class you
took, you should have raised your hand right then and there and
explained to the professor that he was wrong and why. Even if you
don't manage to convince him (and you probably won't), at least you
might manage to persuade your classmates, and in any case you'll make
an impression on both as having a lot of knowledge of the problem
domain.
I wouldn't view most professors or what they say as particularly
reputable, and especially be wary of their opinions! Even many of the
older faculty members I've known mistrust other professors with little
or no experience outside of academia (this intellectual inbreeding is
pretty bad in computer science and AI, something akin to what happened
with academic engineering professors lecturing about steam engines
into the 1930s, from what I've read). But then again, the "state of
the art" of industrial computing practice is also equally poor, so
industry experience is not a reliable indicator either.
> Another example from another university:
>
> - A couple of CS students were protesting the course program
> claiming that the courses which use Lisp and Scheme as implementation
> languages for theoretical subjects discussed must abandon
> those languages and start giving examples in C language
> (because DOOM3, the linux kernel, etc. was all written in C
> and this made the language THE choice of the best programmers).
Situations like this show that there is such a thing as bad publicity:
one sided bad publicity. As soon as there is even one dissenting
voice, people are bound to start asking questions themselves. What you
need to do is establish a dialectic on the subject, and don't be
afraid to be a little obnoxious. Take a lesson from the jerks and
demand to use Lisp in classes with assignments in other languages (but
obviously this is inappropriate if the class is something like
"Introduction to COBOL" :)). You might not succeed (hasn't worked for
me so far :)), but you will change some people's minds.
Vladimir
Vladimir Sedach <(string-downcase (concatenate 'string last-name (subseq first-name 0 1)))@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> writes:
> Emre Sevinc <·····@bilgi.edu.tr> writes:
>> - A couple of CS students were protesting the course program
>> claiming that the courses which use Lisp and Scheme as
>> implementation languages for theoretical subjects discussed must
>> abandon those languages and start giving examples in C language
>> (because DOOM3, the linux kernel, etc. was all written in C and
>> this made the language THE choice of the best programmers).
>
> Situations like this show that there is such a thing as bad publicity:
> one sided bad publicity. As soon as there is even one dissenting
> voice, people are bound to start asking questions themselves. What you
> need to do is establish a dialectic on the subject, and don't be
> afraid to be a little obnoxious.
This is a good point. I've recently been reading _The Wisdom of
Crowds_ which has a lot of interesting stuff in it about how groups of
people make good and bad decisions. Appropos this situation, the
author describes some psych experiments where they got 10 people in a
room, one the actual subject and the other nine confederates of the
experimenter. (The one subject thinks all ten are actually subjects.)
They were then shown a bunch of cards with lines on them and asked
question like whether the lines were the same length or different
lengths. The actual subject was always asked last. After seing a few
cards with lines that were actually the same length they were shown a
card with two lines of obviously different lengths. But the nine
stooges, when asked, say the lines are the same length. Typically the
subject, after hearing nine other folks say the lines were the same
length would go along and say they were the same.
However in later versions of the experiment they one of the stooges
would say the lines were different lengths and that one voice of
dissent would almost always give the subject the confidence needed to
stick to their own perception of things.
So simply being the one person to say, "but the lines *are* different
lengths* may be enough to free others to state the obvious truth and
allow others, who don't see it yet, to see that it's at least a
possible view of the world.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Emre Sevinc <·····@bilgi.edu.tr> writes:
> 1- "The history of genetic programming started with
> Lisp s-expressions but as you all know Lisp has its problems,
> it is slow so programs were converted to C, C++, Java, etc."
I've written slow Lisp code. But I was able to make it fast within
the same Lisp implementation. It isn't the language that is slow.
> 2- "Lisp has a nasty feature called garbage collection
> and it can stop all its operations while trying to do
> something..."
Java has garbage collection also. So why go from Lisp to Java?
> Who said?
>
> - A respected AI proffessor.
Respected by whom?
> Who were the audience?
>
> - Approximately 30 graduate students attending to the AI course
> which is a part of Computer Engineering Master's Degree programme
> at one of the top 3 universities in Turkey.
MIT, CMU, and others have done well with Lisp. CMU's Python compiler
is still used and being improved by an international group of people.
> Now I've heard that people used to say "Lisp is loved by
> professors at the universities..." I guess this is a counter
> example.
Everyone is different.
> The thing is that all those intelligent boys and girls who
> had computer engineering education for at least 4 years
> and will be working in important organizations in the
> future, they all listened to the professor and nodded
> their heads as a sign of approval, after all the man was
> their professor, he programmed lots of applications in AI
> and he was supposed to know what he was talking about, wasn't
> he?
Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. If Lisp is so bad, why is
it still evolving? Why do people still use it for successful
projects? How can people get rich using it?
> I record these kinds of events as perfect examples of
> creating the roots of prejudice. Now can you imagine me
> giving one of those guys a copy of "Practical Lisp" or "On Lisp"
> or some other important book related to the subject?
Yes, I can. Just as you can find arguments against Lisp, you can also
find arguments for Lisp. What if Lisp give your "important"
organization an advantage over the competition? Would you not profit
from that advantage?
> Another example from another university:
>
> - A couple of CS students were protesting the course program
> claiming that the courses which use Lisp and Scheme as implementation
> languages for theoretical subjects discussed must abandon
> those languages and start giving examples in C language
> (because DOOM3, the linux kernel, etc. was all written in C
> and this made the language THE choice of the best programmers).
How do you know these people are the best programmers? C has certain
social advantages in POSIX environments. That doesn't make it the
best language for all uses. And if DOOM3 is so hot, why does it
require the absolute state of the art video hardware to even run?
While I like Linux, the kernel code is hardly free of criticism from
people such as Ken Thompson and Denis Ritchie. These are two people
who are likely to know what they are talking about if you do care to
appeal to authority anyway.
> These three events made me think over and over again. Looks
> like things aren't very bright on this part of the world. I'm
> just a beginner and I don't have much to say, all I can say
> is that once you learn something it is very very difficult to
> forget it and once a well respected man makes some negative
> claims on some aspects of something this will be carried by
> his listeners to others in the community so its effect will
> span a wider audience than intended leading to some echo effect
Your part of the world is a place that can really feel the benefits of
free software (as in libre). I'm not sure what character set issues
you may run into, but I am confident that you will find that there are
a number of Lisp systems available to you. Debian should make trying
them out pretty darn painless. You might be surprised at just how
much library code is also available to you.
My experience is that Lisp has grown more attractive over the past few
years. There are more libraries supported by more implementations. I
don't think this would be the case if Lisp had no advantages.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
From: surendra
Subject: Re: Do academics really love Lisp? I doubt!
Date:
Message-ID: <cluto8$mav$1@news.asu.edu>
Emre Sevinc wrote:
>
> The thing is that all those intelligent boys and girls who
> had computer engineering education for at least 4 years
> and will be working in important organizations in the
> future, they all listened to the professor and nodded
> their heads as a sign of approval,
>
> - A couple of CS students were protesting the course program
> claiming that the courses which use Lisp and Scheme as implementation
> languages for theoretical subjects discussed must abandon
> those languages and start giving examples in C language
> (because DOOM3, the linux kernel, etc. was all written in C
> and this made the language THE choice of the best programmers).
>
I am a Teaching Assistant for a senior/graduate level Artificial
Intellignece course, and we use LISP for programming projects in our class.
In the beginning of semester all the students in the class protest
against us using LISP and want us to use JAVA.
The reason why they do that is because most of the students hate being
forced to learn a new language. They are prejudiced against using LISP
because they feel it won't add to their resumes and it is a language
which they will hardly ever use beyond this class.
But we still force them to use LISP. And as I grade their assignments
and projects I have realised that the problem is not the language, but
programming itself. The students who are good programmers they learn the
language pretty fast and do a good job in the projects and assignments
where as the other students they still struggle and complain about us
using LISP.
One reason why I feel that, this happens is because of the way people
are taught how to program. In most of the schools when the students are
taught programming the teachers don' use books like "Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs". They rather introduce them to JAVA
and students instead of learning basic programming concepts of
abstraction and program structure are bogged down by the syntax of JAVA.
They hardly know what a list means at the end of the course. And so
have to take other courses like algorithms and data structures.
The good programmers on the other hand altough they learn the same stuff
in class but out of their natural curiosity they dig deeper into the
language and learn advanced stuff on their own(by the class standard).
And hence when they come for this course they are familiar and used to
programming with lists.
If schools and teachers would be using books like "Structure ...
Programs" the students would be far better programmers for whatever
language they program in, and it will be very easy for them to switch to
different languages.
-Surendra Singhi
surendra <·········@netscape.net> writes:
> I am a Teaching Assistant for a senior/graduate level Artificial
> Intellignece course, and we use LISP for programming projects in our
> class.
Which "LISP"?
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
From: surendra
Subject: Re: Do academics really love Lisp? I doubt!
Date:
Message-ID: <cm2iu7$jru$1@news.asu.edu>
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> surendra <·········@netscape.net> writes:
>
>
>>I am a Teaching Assistant for a senior/graduate level Artificial
>>Intellignece course, and we use LISP for programming projects in our
>>class.
>
>
> Which "LISP"?
Ansi Common Lisp.
Surendra Singhi
surendra <·········@netscape.net> wrote in message news:<············@news.asu.edu>...
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> > surendra <·········@netscape.net> writes:
> >
> >
> >>I am a Teaching Assistant for a senior/graduate level Artificial
> >>Intellignece course, and we use LISP for programming projects in our
> >>class.
> >
> >
> > Which "LISP"?
>
> Ansi Common Lisp.
>
> Surendra Singhi
I think he means, " which implementation? CMUCL? Clisp?
From: surendra singhi
Subject: Re: Do academics really love Lisp? I doubt!
Date:
Message-ID: <cm70fd$87v$1@news.asu.edu>
"matt knox" <···········@gmail.com> wrote in message
·································@posting.google.com...
> surendra <·········@netscape.net> wrote in message
> news:<············@news.asu.edu>...
>> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>> > surendra <·········@netscape.net> writes:
>> >
>> >
>> >>I am a Teaching Assistant for a senior/graduate level Artificial
>> >>Intellignece course, and we use LISP for programming projects in our
>> >>class.
>> >
>> >
>> > Which "LISP"?
>>
>> Ansi Common Lisp.
>>
>> Surendra Singhi
>
> I think he means, " which implementation? CMUCL? Clisp?
Why does that matter?
Anyway, Allegro.
- Surendra Singhi
···········@gmail.com (matt knox) writes:
> I think he means, " which implementation? CMUCL? Clisp?
Since Surendra used the old fashioned capitalization "LISP", I was
actually interested in knowing whether he used Common Lisp, Scheme, or
some other dialect.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface