In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They wanted
users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the server
process. They therefore needed a safe interpreted language so that a
programming error by one user didn't crash the server and bring down
all the Web services for an organization.
Tcl was available. Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
larger application programs. But the Tcl interpreter as distributed had
one terrible bug: it wasn't thread safe, i.e., you couldn't have two
copies of the Tcl interpreter running inside the same program at the
same time. Doug and Jim had to read through the Tcl source code and
modify it to be thread safe. So it was critically important for them
that Tcl was open-source and simple enough so as to not require months
or years of study to understand the whole system.
Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and their
investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html; Scheme 48 is the closest
to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
explaining how to do it.
Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right
30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for
40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government
and private funding. These days, most former Lisp programmers are stuck
using Unix and Microsoft programming environments and, not only do they
have to put up with these inferior environments,
From: hyperstring.net ltd
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <1164656596.730705.325140@14g2000cws.googlegroups.com>
gavino wrote:
> In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
> only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They wanted
> users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the server
> process. They therefore needed a safe interpreted language so that a
> programming error by one user didn't crash the server and bring down
> all the Web services for an organization.
>
> Tcl was available. Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
> larger application programs. But the Tcl interpreter as distributed had
> one terrible bug: it wasn't thread safe, i.e., you couldn't have two
> copies of the Tcl interpreter running inside the same program at the
> same time. Doug and Jim had to read through the Tcl source code and
> modify it to be thread safe. So it was critically important for them
> that Tcl was open-source and simple enough so as to not require months
> or years of study to understand the whole system.
>
> Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
> scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
> they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
> marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and thei
> investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
> implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
> http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
> http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html; Scheme 48 is the closest
> to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
> to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
> explaining how to do it.
>
> Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right
> 30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for
> 40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government
> and private funding. These days, most former Lisp programmers are stuck
> using Unix and Microsoft programming environments and, not only do they
> have to put up with these inferior environments,
An interesting post - however not ALL of us are stuck. I write lisp
95-99% of my working time! and its FUN, its really really FUN and
exciting - its really rewarding because 9 times out of ten once i've
corrected my drunken typos my code works, it really works and it works
well!
Lisp
Love
Is
Software
Programming
:-)
Paul
hyperstring.net
On Nov 27, 11:43 am, "hyperstring.net ltd"
<············@hyperstring.net> wrote:
> gavino wrote:
> > In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
> > only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They wanted
> > users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the server
> > process. They therefore needed a safe interpreted language so that a
> > programming error by one user didn't crash the server and bring down
> > all the Web services for an organization.
>
> > Tcl was available. Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
> > larger application programs. But the Tcl interpreter as distributed had
> > one terrible bug: it wasn't thread safe, i.e., you couldn't have two
> > copies of the Tcl interpreter running inside the same program at the
> > same time. Doug and Jim had to read through the Tcl source code and
> > modify it to be thread safe. So it was critically important for them
> > that Tcl was open-source and simple enough so as to not require months
> > or years of study to understand the whole system.
>
> > Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
> > scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
> > they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
> > marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and thei
> > investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
> > implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
> >http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
> >http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html;Scheme 48 is the closest
> > to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
> > to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
> > explaining how to do it.
>
> > Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right
> > 30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for
> > 40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government
> > and private funding. These days, most former Lisp programmers are stuck
> > using Unix and Microsoft programming environments and, not only do they
> > have to put up with these inferior environments,An interesting post - however not ALL of us are stuck. I write lisp
> 95-99% of my working time! and its FUN, its really really FUN and
> exciting - its really rewarding because 9 times out of ten once i've
> corrected my drunken typos my code works, it really works and it works
> well!
>
> Lisp
>
> Love
> Is
> Software
> Programming
>
> :-)
>
> Paul
> hyperstring.net- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -
awesome, what do you think is the best book to learn programming? then
learn lisp?
From: hyperstring.net ltd
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <1164657934.387588.61130@l39g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>
gavino wrote:
> On Nov 27, 11:43 am, "hyperstring.net ltd"
> <············@hyperstring.net> wrote:
> > gavino wrote:
> > > In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
> > > only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They wanted
> > > users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the server
> > > process. They therefore needed a safe interpreted language so that a
> > > programming error by one user didn't crash the server and bring down
> > > all the Web services for an organization.
> >
> > > Tcl was available. Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
> > > larger application programs. But the Tcl interpreter as distributed had
> > > one terrible bug: it wasn't thread safe, i.e., you couldn't have two
> > > copies of the Tcl interpreter running inside the same program at the
> > > same time. Doug and Jim had to read through the Tcl source code and
> > > modify it to be thread safe. So it was critically important for them
> > > that Tcl was open-source and simple enough so as to not require months
> > > or years of study to understand the whole system.
> >
> > > Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
> > > scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
> > > they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
> > > marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and thei
> > > investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
> > > implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
> > >http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
> > >http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html;Scheme 48 is the closest
> > > to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
> > > to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
> > > explaining how to do it.
> >
> > > Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right
> > > 30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for
> > > 40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government
> > > and private funding. These days, most former Lisp programmers are stuck
> > > using Unix and Microsoft programming environments and, not only do they
> > > have to put up with these inferior environments,An interesting post - however not ALL of us are stuck. I write lisp
> > 95-99% of my working time! and its FUN, its really really FUN and
> > exciting - its really rewarding because 9 times out of ten once i've
> > corrected my drunken typos my code works, it really works and it works
> > well!
> >
> > Lisp
> >
> > Love
> > Is
> > Software
> > Programming
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Paul
> > hyperstring.net- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -
>
>
> awesome, what do you think is the best book to learn programming? then
> learn lisp?
Well for me I love Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel but I'm from a
programming background - http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/lisp.html I like
- it depends on you and your level. There's quite a lot of stuff on the
Internet.
What do others recommend?
From: ··············@googlemail.com
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <1164660045.750938.300790@h54g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
On Nov 27, 8:47 pm, "gavino" <········@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Nov 27, 11:43 am, "hyperstring.net ltd"
>
>
>
> <············@hyperstring.net> wrote:
> > gavino wrote:
> > > In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
> > > only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They wanted
> > > users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the server
> > > process. They therefore needed a safe interpreted language so that a
> > > programming error by one user didn't crash the server and bring down
> > > all the Web services for an organization.
>
> > > Tcl was available. Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
> > > larger application programs. But the Tcl interpreter as distributed had
> > > one terrible bug: it wasn't thread safe, i.e., you couldn't have two
> > > copies of the Tcl interpreter running inside the same program at the
> > > same time. Doug and Jim had to read through the Tcl source code and
> > > modify it to be thread safe. So it was critically important for them
> > > that Tcl was open-source and simple enough so as to not require months
> > > or years of study to understand the whole system.
>
> > > Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
> > > scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
> > > they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
> > > marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and thei
> > > investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
> > > implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
> > >http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
> > >http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html;Scheme48 is the closest
> > > to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
> > > to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
> > > explaining how to do it.
>
> > > Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right
> > > 30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for
> > > 40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government
> > > and private funding. These days, most former Lisp programmers are stuck
> > > using Unix and Microsoft programming environments and, not only do they
> > > have to put up with these inferior environments,An interesting post - however not ALL of us are stuck. I write lisp
> > 95-99% of my working time! and its FUN, its really really FUN and
> > exciting - its really rewarding because 9 times out of ten once i've
> > corrected my drunken typos my code works, it really works and it works
> > well!
>
> > Lisp
>
> > Love
> > Is
> > Software
> > Programming
>
> > :-)
>
> > Paul
> > hyperstring.net- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -awesome, what do you think is the best book to learn programming? then
> learn lisp?
Well, I just finished SICP and am working my way through ANSI Common
Lisp by Paul Graham now. I don't have much experience programming,
just a little C from a class back in high school. SICP is superb. I
couldn't praise it enough. It's a truly enlightening book and, even
though it's about programming in general, it will really make you
appreciate Lisp and especially Scheme. I constantly find myself
refering back to into when reading other books or articles. ANSI
Common Lisp has been great so far. It's full of useful info and hints.
The reference section in the back is also very handy. Paul Graham
also has a great writing style. Anyways, just my two cents... even
though it probably isn't worth that much.
From: ······@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <1164733442.678671.208740@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com>
gavino wrote:
> awesome, what do you think is the best book to learn programming? then
> learn lisp?
Don't bother with lisp. It's a stupid failed language. And its users
are too
dumb to realize that.
······@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> Don't bother with lisp. It's a stupid failed language. And its users
> are too dumb to realize that.
And they are so smug about it, too.
I really hate to feed this troll, but...
> Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
> larger application programs. ...
>...
> Compare this to Lisp. ...
Okay, let's compare, shall we:
Tcl is a slow, stupidly designed,scripting language that lasted about
ten years, thence flamed out under its own plodding stupidity, and is
now essentially dead.
Lisp is a fast, brilliantly designed, true programming language that
has lasted >40 years, and has a small but vibrant community of some of
the best minds in computer science, and is increasing (slowly) in size.
Yes, getting it right DOES matter!
········@gmail.com wrote:
> I really hate to feed this troll, but...
>
>
>>Tcl was easy to download and designed to fit inside
>>larger application programs. ...
>>...
>>Compare this to Lisp. ...
>
>
> Okay, let's compare, shall we:
>
> Tcl is a slow, stupidly designed,scripting language that lasted about
> ten years, thence flamed out under its own plodding stupidity, and is
> now essentially dead.
We of all people should know how exagerated can be reports of death. The
Lisp application development platform you will all be using in a couple
of years sits atop Tcl/Tk. Tcl will survive forever*, the mitachondria
fueling all Lisp organisms to come.
kt
* We could rewrite it all in Lisp, but we have all that funeral home
software to write.**
** http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm
k
--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
> > Tcl is a slow, stupidly designed,scripting language that lasted about
> > ten years, thence flamed out under its own plodding stupidity, and is
> > now essentially dead.
>
> We of all people should know how exagerated can be reports of death. The
> Lisp application development platform you will all be using in a couple
> of years sits atop Tcl/Tk. Tcl will survive forever*, the mitachondria
> fueling all Lisp organisms to come.
I'll leave the analysis of Tcl's death as an exercise for the opinion
of the reader:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/98ec976d58b75c86
You certainly can't disagree with: "slow", "stupidly designed"
(everything being strings), and "scripting language"... well, of course
You (of all people) *can* *too* disagree... :-)
OTOH, I argee with you that Tcl will probably live on for the
foreseeable future via Tk, but sane engineers will hide all that under
macros and cross compilers. (Sane Lisp engineers who HAVE macros and
cross-compilers at the ir fingertips anyhow! :-)
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Yes, Trollface, getting it right DOES matter!
Date:
Message-ID: <b1Sah.96$Mg.50@newsfe11.lga>
········@gmail.com wrote:
>>>Tcl is a slow, stupidly designed,scripting language that lasted about
>>>ten years, thence flamed out under its own plodding stupidity, and is
>>>now essentially dead.
>>
>>We of all people should know how exagerated can be reports of death. The
>>Lisp application development platform you will all be using in a couple
>>of years sits atop Tcl/Tk. Tcl will survive forever*, the mitachondria
>>fueling all Lisp organisms to come.
>
>
> I'll leave the analysis of Tcl's death as an exercise for the opinion
> of the reader:
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_frm/thread/98ec976d58b75c86
>
> You certainly can't disagree with: "slow", "stupidly designed"
> (everything being strings), and "scripting language"... well, of course
> You (of all people) *can* *too* disagree... :-)
We of all people should understand Worse Is Better. And I forgot to
mention a little flash in the pan called Python, for which Tkinter (2+2
left as an exercise) is the GUI of choice. Dare I look at what Ruby
prefers...well, whaddya know, our very own Bill Atkins:
"1. Tk
pros: comes with Ruby; [Hello. ed] pretty much everywhere; powerful
TkText widget cons: messy, mostly undocumented API; unconventional
appearance; requires tcl; no tree control; it's Tk :)"
They nailed the Grail: portability, with more than just a GUI, but also
sockets, threads, file manager services, and then we can talk about
libraries. I have bolted in OpenAL (four days effort) and Tcl Snack
(four min.. oh, hang on, It Just Works(tm)).
You found a hand-wringing thread on the Tcl list... they just need to do
the classic restructuring thing, remake themselves as--- well, no need,
it has already happened: the scripting environment is now being scripted
by HLLs.
The big three have adopted Tcl/Tk as a platform, game over. Next time I
want to get a project going I won't spin my wheels with you zombies,
I'll propose it over on the Tcl list, ccing ruby, python, and (I 'spose)
you deadbeats.
kt
--
Cells: http://common-lisp.net/project/cells/
"I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific."
-- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon
From: Jussi Piitulainen
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <qotac2c7fye.fsf@venus.ling.helsinki.fi>
gavino yanks:
> In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee
> had only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They
> wanted users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the
...
Just so that nobody is mislead, this is not a new articulate gavino
but a verbatim copy of the last several paragraphs from the
introduction to "Tcl for Web Nerds" by Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun,
and Lydia Sandon, <http://philip.greenspun.com/tcl/>.
From: ·······@gmail.com
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <1164732892.837112.110750@45g2000cws.googlegroups.com>
Jussi Piitulainen wrote:
> gavino yanks:
>
> > In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee
> > had only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They
> > wanted users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the
> ...
>
> Just so that nobody is mislead, this is not a new articulate gavino
> but a verbatim copy of the last several paragraphs from the
> introduction to "Tcl for Web Nerds" by Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun,
> and Lydia Sandon, <http://philip.greenspun.com/tcl/>.
Moreso, this is not the first time it has happened:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.scheme/browse_frm/thread/66b1499865f68043/2cf952380cdf75e1?lnk=st&q=gavino+greenspun&rnum=2#2cf952380cdf75e1
Guess he's running out of ideas.
From: Tim X
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <87psb6afh2.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au>
Jussi Piitulainen <········@ling.helsinki.fi> writes:
> gavino yanks:
>
>> In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee
>> had only a few months to build the whole server from scratch. They
>> wanted users to be able to write small programs that ran inside the
> ...
>
> Just so that nobody is mislead, this is not a new articulate gavino
> but a verbatim copy of the last several paragraphs from the
> introduction to "Tcl for Web Nerds" by Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun,
> and Lydia Sandon, <http://philip.greenspun.com/tcl/>.
Just another perspecitve....
Tcl was the first scripting language I learned after shell scripts and
after having programmed for a few years in C (and unfortunately a bit
of C++) and Pascal. At the time, I really enjoyed it - one thing I
remember was the fun I had using expr to evaluate arbitrary Tcl code
blocks and getting to understand and use regexp.
Later I did prolog, which took a while before the 'penny dropped'. At
the time, I quite liked it, but began to find some aspects a little
limiting.
Then I had a few years in the wilderness programming Java. At the
time, I initially enjoyed it because there was a wealth of useful
libraries and I could develop apps relatively fast by using them. I
was also doing a lot of distributed object systems and enjoyed
serialising objects etc. In the end, I began to hate how verbose it
was and got frustrated by version changes, depricated functions and
weird bugs with things like dates, time and non-US timezone bugs etc.
Then I started looking at perl and really enjoyed it until I had to
work on some large perl based projects and then, learnt to hate it. I
now don't hate it and use it when I need to do something quick, but
still think it has issues when used within teams and for large
projects (unless you have a very very strict coding style guide and
manage the project very very carefully).
I then briefly looked at python, but all the comments I came across
referencing lisp and scheme got me thinking about those languages. I
briefly looked at them both and decided I liked lisp more than scheme
(I can't explain this very well - lisp just felt more natural to me
than scheme). I never did warm to python, but maybe I just didn't give
it long enough.
The only other language I'm enjoying apart from lisp is ruby. For an
OO language, its the nicest one I've used since playing with smalltalk
briefly while at uni.
My experience so far is that while Tcl is OK, I find development in
lisp faster, easier on my head and more predictable. I also think lisp
has done more for my general programming skills than any other single
language.
I don't agree with the argument that lisp has achieved nothing in 40
years. At the very least, I think lisp has been the inspiration for
many of the things people claim they like about new languages like
java, and python. I also think there has been a lot of really great
achievements using lisp in areas of research, opening peoples
imaginations, attitudes and skills with respect to programming and I
know of a number of people who have used lisp to quickly prototype
ideas before spending a lot longer developing the "commercial" version
in a language which is more acceptable to investors and pointy haired
bosses.
Its a mistake IMO to measure the value or even success of a language
merely on the number of successful commercial applications written in
the language. It should be remembered that the majority of programmers
do not develop commercial software, but rather develop custom softare
for large companies "in-house".
The other thing to consider is how many successful commercial products
have been written in Tcl? I cannot think of many and the couple I do
know of were bought out by the competition (who were not using Tcl)
and development was stopped/starved/locked away.
Tim
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
From: Neal Bridges
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <12mnfgt49kkph7f@corp.supernews.com>
"gavino" <········@yahoo.com> wrote in message
·····························@l39g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> In the case of AOLserver, for example, Jim Davidson and Doug McKee had
> only a few months to build the whole server from scratch.
Took five seconds to find that this entire post by 'gavino' was plagiarized
from this site:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/373
The first clue was the correct grammar and spelling.
--
Neal
From: Alex Mizrahi
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <456c0af1$0$49207$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
(message (Hello 'gavino)
(you :wrote :on '(27 Nov 2006 11:27:01 -0800))
(
g> Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
g> scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
g> they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
g> marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and their
g> investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
g> implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
g> http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
g> http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html; Scheme 48 is the closest
g> to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
g> to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
g> explaining how to do it.
interesting, why do they (i don't mean gavino, certainly, but authors of the
TCL book -- Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun, and Lydia Sandon) insult Lisp
that way?
they should know, that there are small lisp and scheme implementations --
for example, Tiny Scheme, that has only 120 kb of source, and can be
integrated anywhere without any hassle, and certainly it's so simple that
anyone can tailor it to their own purposes in shortest terms.
if they want full Common Lisp to be embedded -- there is Embeddable Common
Lisp. it's 3.7 MB DLL if it's compiled with GMP and Boehm GC, but it's
possible to cut away GMP, Boehm GC (use simplier one) and CLOS -- and it
will be quite small.
so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are telling
lies!
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
Alex Mizrahi wrote:
>
> interesting, why do they (i don't mean gavino, certainly, but authors of the
> TCL book -- Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun, and Lydia Sandon) insult Lisp
> that way?
>
> they should know, that there are small lisp and scheme implementations --
> for example, Tiny Scheme, that has only 120 kb of source, and can be
> integrated anywhere without any hassle, and certainly it's so simple that
> anyone can tailor it to their own purposes in shortest terms.
>
> if they want full Common Lisp to be embedded -- there is Embeddable Common
> Lisp. it's 3.7 MB DLL if it's compiled with GMP and Boehm GC, but it's
> possible to cut away GMP, Boehm GC (use simplier one) and CLOS -- and it
> will be quite small.
>
> so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are telling
> lies!
Consider the timing. They are talking about the early 80's when the
techniques for embedding lisp were not as well understood and a hundred
K was considered huge.
From: Alex Mizrahi
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <456ca41e$0$49208$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
(message (Hello 'Joe)
(you :wrote :on '(28 Nov 2006 09:51:31 -0800))
(
JM> Consider the timing. They are talking about the early 80's when the
this book is rather late 90's.
JM> techniques for embedding lisp were not as well understood and a hundred
JM> K was considered huge.
anyway, i don't see why Tcl would be smaller/better than Scheme
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
From: marc spitzer
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <slrnempt9i.685.ms4720@sdf.lonestar.org>
On 2006-11-28, Alex Mizrahi <········@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> anyway, i don't see why Tcl would be smaller/better than Scheme
It does not need to be better, it just needs to be good enough
to get the job done. And it was good enough so the job got done,
then it is off to the next problem.
marc
--
······@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <877ixfbo20.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> interesting, why do [...] Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun, and Lydia
> Sandon) insult Lisp that way?
>
> they should know, that there are small lisp and scheme implementations [...]
Indeed, they should know!
> so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are telling
> lies!
Read again their names!
Still no? Search about them in google.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity.
From: Alex Mizrahi
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <456c68e3$0$49198$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
(message (Hello 'Pascal)
(you :wrote :on '(Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:15:03 +0100))
(
??>> so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are
??>> telling lies!
PB> Read again their names!
PB> Still no? Search about them in google.
i understand who are they, i don't understand why are they writting what
they are writting!
>But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed to fit neatly into
>someone else's program.
Embeddable Common Lisp was designed to, it's being even embedded into the
Quake game console!
here's list of scheme implementations:
http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Lisp/Scheme/Implementations/
and there are at least five that say that they are embeddable in their
description!
one of them: Elk Scheme - the Extension Language Kit.
In contrast to existing, stand-alone Scheme systems Elk has been designed
specifically as an embeddable, reusable extension language subsystem for
applications written in C or C++.
so how is it possible to understand their phrase -- either they are complete
morons and unable to use google to find embeddable lisps, or the embeddable
lisps have too low quality, or they are telling lies for some reason!
so far third option looks most realistic, since they specially insult lisp,
that is very strange in introduction of the Tcl book (it would be more
approprited if book was called "How Lisp Sucks").
they could just say -- "Tcl was specially designed to be embeddable, so it
integrates better than Lisp implementations" -- that might be true (however,
i think that Tcl is brain-damaged, it's one of few languages that have
syntax too hard for my brain).
maybe Greenspun had negative experience with commercail use of Lisp? the
fail of Symbolics distracted him too much?
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <87irgza1zw.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> (message (Hello 'Pascal)
> (you :wrote :on '(Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:15:03 +0100))
> (
>
> ??>> so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are
> ??>> telling lies!
>
> PB> Read again their names!
> PB> Still no? Search about them in google.
>
> i understand who are they, i don't understand why are they writting what
> they are writting!
Well PG didn't make his fortune with Tcl... What did his competitors use again?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay
From: Sidney Markowitz
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <456c8a58$0$82562$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>
Alex Mizrahi wrote, On 29/11/06 5:50 AM:
> i understand who are they, i don't understand why are they writting what
> they are writting!
>
>> But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed to fit neatly into
>> someone else's program.
>
> Embeddable Common Lisp was designed to, it's being even embedded into the
> Quake game console!
Look at the context. The quote is from the Introduction of Ableson,
Greenspun & Sandon's book _TCL for Web Nerds_ in the section "Lisp
Without a Brain".
http://philip.greenspun.com/tcl/introduction.adp
I don't know when the TCL book was written but there are comments there
dated 1999, so the book was written by then.
There they say that they wrote a book about TCL for students in their
class who would be learning to use AOLServer, which uses an embedded TCL
as its scripting language. That section talks about why AOLServer used
TCL instead of Lisp.
According to Greenspun's book on AOLServer,
http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/aolserver/introduction-1.html
"AOLserver? It was built in 1994 by Jim Davidson and Doug McKee"
Looking at the copyright notices in ECL, it was taken over from ECOLisp
in 2000.
Yes, KCL was written in the mid-80's and ECOLisp was forked from it in
the early 90's and updated up to 1993, but it was not yet a suitable
option for AOLServer as the current ECL _might_ now be.
So what they wrote in 1999 or earlier about the reasons for AOLServer
using an embedded TCL instead of an embedded Lisp in 1994 was accurate.
--
Sidney Markowitz
http://www.sidney.com
> Embeddable Common Lisp was designed to, it's being even embedded into the
> Quake game console!
>From somebody who looked at an alternative for LUA and still has to use
LUA this is just not true. You can't have multiple interpreters,
complete separated name and objectspaces, including metaprogramming,
fair cpu scheduling between interpreters (because there aren't multiple
ones), no threads and so on and so on.
So it is a more embeddable approach but still not of high quality.
From: Tim X
Subject: Re: philip greenspun, why list has nothing to show for 40 years of work and lispers stuck in .net or unix(java?)
Date:
Message-ID: <87lkluaf7k.fsf@lion.rapttech.com.au>
"Alex Mizrahi" <········@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> (message (Hello 'gavino)
> (you :wrote :on '(27 Nov 2006 11:27:01 -0800))
> (
>
> g> Compare this to Lisp. Some of the best and brightest computer
> g> scientists raised money to build commercial Lisp implementations that
> g> they then went out and hawked in an indifferent and confused
> g> marketplace. They succeeded only in breaking their hearts and their
> g> investors' wallets. A handful of academics produced free open-source
> g> implementations, notably CMU Common Lisp (see
> g> http://www.cons.org/cmucl/) and various versions of Scheme (see
> g> http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html; Scheme 48 is the closest
> g> to Tcl in spirit). But these multi-megabyte monsters weren't designed
> g> to fit neatly into someone else's program. Nor was there any document
> g> explaining how to do it.
>
> interesting, why do they (i don't mean gavino, certainly, but authors of the
> TCL book -- Hal Abelson, Philip Greenspun, and Lydia Sandon) insult Lisp
> that way?
>
> they should know, that there are small lisp and scheme implementations --
> for example, Tiny Scheme, that has only 120 kb of source, and can be
> integrated anywhere without any hassle, and certainly it's so simple that
> anyone can tailor it to their own purposes in shortest terms.
>
> if they want full Common Lisp to be embedded -- there is Embeddable Common
> Lisp. it's 3.7 MB DLL if it's compiled with GMP and Boehm GC, but it's
> possible to cut away GMP, Boehm GC (use simplier one) and CLOS -- and it
> will be quite small.
>
> so it's complete bullshit -- authors should be ashamed, they are telling
> lies!
>
AKA selling books!
T.
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au