Hello all.
I've been reading the posts in this newsgroup for a while now, and the
first thing I must say is that there are people here that simply rock at
LISP coding. I believe that seeing some of you coding must be awesome!
And that lead me to think of LISP as much more than a programming
language that I am obliged to learn so that I can obtain approval in
some classes at school.
So, to begin, I have two questions:
1 - What can you do with LISP? I mean, is it possible and "easy" to
build a program to manage the stocks at a small business and make that
program access a database (MySQL, Oracle, SQLServer)? How to build an
interface in Delphi or VB.NET way? Is Alegro Common LISP, by Franz, a
way to go?
2 - I've read a lot of people talking about Ansi LISP. Does Franz's LISP
comply with that? If not, are there a lot of differences? If not Franz
what to use? Only know Franz, Windows programming at school! :(
Thank you all
Cumps, Polecat
Polecat wrote:
> Hello all.
>
> I've been reading the posts in this newsgroup for a while now, and the
> first thing I must say is that there are people here that simply rock at
> LISP coding. I believe that seeing some of you coding must be awesome!
> And that lead me to think of LISP as much more than a programming
> language that I am obliged to learn so that I can obtain approval in
> some classes at school.
> So, to begin, I have two questions:
>
> 1 - What can you do with LISP? I mean, is it possible and "easy" to
> build a program to manage the stocks at a small business and make that
> program access a database (MySQL, Oracle, SQLServer)?
Yep. In this sense, Lisp is just another programming language.
How to build an
> interface in Delphi or VB.NET way?
ACL and Lispworks come with nice GUI builders and GUI frameworks. Use
Cells-Gtk with other Lisps.
> Is Alegro Common LISP, by Franz, a
> way to go?
Allegro is the best (by far), most expensive, and hardest to license for
deployment. Many are happy with Lispworks, which is cheaper and last I
looked did not charge for deployment.
>
> 2 - I've read a lot of people talking about Ansi LISP. Does Franz's LISP
> comply with that? If not, are there a lot of differences?
ACL is pretty good this way. It's a big spec, and there are one or two
deviations. Nothing to base a decision on, though.
> If not Franz
> what to use? Only know Franz, Windows programming at school! :(
Lispworks. Maybe Clisp+SLime+XEmacs, if you do not mind that rat's nest
of tools.
--
Kenny
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"If you plan to enter text which our system might consider to be
obscene, check here to certify that you are old enough to hear the
resulting output." -- Bell Labs text-to-speech interactive Web page
Polecat <·············@mail.pt> writes:
> Hello all.
>
> I've been reading the posts in this newsgroup for a while now, and the
> first thing I must say is that there are people here that simply rock
> at LISP coding. I believe that seeing some of you coding must be
> awesome!
If we could only convince the babes that it was sexy, too....
> And that lead me to think of LISP as much more than a
> programming language that I am obliged to learn so that I can obtain
> approval in some classes at school.
>
> So, to begin, I have two questions:
>
> 1 - What can you do with LISP?
You can do anything general purpose, and a lot of things that would
make your jaw drop. For example, J. Strother Moore has used Lisp to
prove the correctness of AMD's floating point implementation (see
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/ )
ITA Software uses Common Lisp to find cheap airline tickets. Sounds
easy, right? It isn't. Even if you know the flight you will be on
and the seat you will occupy, there are usually over ten thousand fare
combinations that would pay for it.
> I mean, is it possible and "easy" to build a program to manage the
> stocks at a small business and make that program access a database
> (MySQL, Oracle, SQLServer)? How to build an interface in Delphi or
> VB.NET way?
It will not be as easy as using Delphi or VB.NET where you can drag
and drop to get a slick gui interface. But it isn't all that hard.
There are several ODBC back ends and SQL interfaces for Common Lisp
that will get you going with database access.
> Is Allegro Common LISP, by Franz, a way to go?
Certainly. They have a reputation for being expensive, but they are a
stable company that has been doing Lisp for a long time.
If you need to experiment on a budget, there are less expensive
alternatives, like Xanalys.
> 2 - I've read a lot of people talking about Ansi LISP. Does Franz's
> LISP comply with that?
More or less.
> If not, are there a lot of differences?
We like to rag on Franz because they have been known to interpret the
standard a little bit loosely, but they really do adhere to the
standard in nearly everything but some really obscure edge cases that
I wouldn't worry about. I have worked for several companies that have
used Allegro Common Lisp and it has been a reliable platform.
--
~jrm
On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 19:14:57 -0400, Joe Marshall <·············@comcast.net> wrote:
> If you need to experiment on a budget, there are less expensive
> alternatives, like Xanalys.
Called LispWorks Ltd now:
<http://www.lispworks.com/news/news12.html>
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
> On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 19:14:57 -0400, Joe Marshall <·············@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> If you need to experiment on a budget, there are less expensive
>> alternatives, like Xanalys.
>
> Called LispWorks Ltd now:
>
> <http://www.lispworks.com/news/news12.html>
Damnit! I had just gotten used to not calling them Harlequin!
--
~jrm
Polecat <·············@mail.pt> writes:
> 1 - What can you do with LISP? I mean, is it possible and "easy" to
> build a program to manage the stocks at a small business and make that
> program access a database (MySQL, Oracle, SQLServer)? How to build an
> interface in Delphi or VB.NET way? Is Alegro Common LISP, by Franz, a
> way to go?
I don't talk much about how to build UIs but for the rest you can take
a look at:
<http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>
or buy the treeware version from Apress.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel * ·····@gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
Polecat <·············@mail.pt> writes:
> I've been reading the posts in this newsgroup for a while now, and the
> first thing I must say is that there are people here that simply rock
> at LISP coding. I believe that seeing some of you coding must be
> awesome! And that lead me to think of LISP as much more than a
You can find and study a lot of interesting code here:
http://common-lisp.net
http://www.cliki.net
> 2 - I've read a lot of people talking about Ansi LISP. Does Franz's
> LISP comply with that? If not, are there a lot of differences? If not
It is worth noting that Franz Lisp is an old, pre-ANSI Common Lisp
dialect from the 1980s(?). The current flagship product by Franz is
called Allegro Common Lisp (often abbreviated as "ACL" or "Allegro
CL"), which is ANSI compliant.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface