······@gmail.com <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
1) http://norvig.com/java-lisp.html
2) http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
3) http://www.flownet.com/ron/papers/lisp-java.pdf
But try it for yourself. I'm convinced. I've recoded some C tools I've
written over the years in Lisp; the Lisp code usually has 3-5x fewer
lines of code, does more, and is developed much, much more quickly. The
company I work for flirted with PSP (Personal Software Process). As
part of the training, engineers were asked to write C and measure
certain things thought important by PSP. Again, using Lisp, I
literally blew away the C programmers.
On May 1, 7:15 pm, ·······@gmail.com" <······@gmail.com> wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
Yes, for instance, there is the empirical observation in [RIG2008]
that everyone talks about how great Lisp is.
---
List of Citations
[RIG2008]: ······@gmail.com, May 1, 2008, Usenet message ID: <515b8a0e-
···························@m73g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>
······@gmail.com wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
more of it here:
http://wiki.alu.org/The_Road_to_Lisp_Survey
i like lisp, but no i can't prove why
..it just makes sense i guess .. axioms?
--
Lars Rune N�stdal
http://nostdal.org/
······@gmail.com wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
No, it's just something we say to make ourselves feel better about
having bet wrong on Lisp.
Learned my lesson, tho. I am not giving up my pogo-stick until I see a
study showing some objective advantage of the bicycle.
hth, kenny
--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"I've never read the rulebook. My job is to catch the ball."
-- Catcher Josh Bard after making a great catch on a foul ball
and then sliding into the dugout, which by the rules allowed the
runners to advance one base costing his pitcher a possible shutout
because there was a runner on third base.
"My sig is longer than most of my articles."
-- Kenny Tilton
······@gmail.com wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
Strange. Most people I was talking to do not say that Lisp is "great".
They fear of the many parentheses, they do not like garbage collectors,
they say the lisp-syntax is not writable or readable, they say Lisp is a
functional programming language, and functional programming languages
are slow and need much memory, most of them think lisp is purely
interpreted, and do not know the differences between common lisp and
scheme, and therefore mix up the "disadvantages" of both languages. They
do not like the Object-System of Common Lisp, and - the argument that
beats everything - it is not widely used, and anything that is not
widely used is bad.
However, they didnt convince me. I know how bad C++ is. I like Java, I
like Perl, and I even like C in some cases, and I like many aspects of
Common Lisp - not all, but more than I like about C++. Maybe if I was a
"professional" IT-economy-dude, being able to command a group of
programmers to do all the gross stuff I didnt want to do with C++, I
would see things different. But as long as I am not, and only creating
few smaller programs for my private purpose so far, doing some
"experiments" (or creating small webpages), CL is superior to all other
systems I know.
Maybe, to ask about the "greatness" of (Common) Lisp is a little
"shortsighted", without telling what you want to do with it. If you want
to create some AJAX-Web-Tat, then I think Common Lisp will be a good
choice, compared to php or python, assuming that you do not want to code
directly in C (which I wouldnt do for security reasons). If you want
code for a tiny AVR Microcontroller, I dont know if Common Lisp is the
right choice (at least I havent seen CL to be used for this purpose yet,
but it wouldnt be the first time CL surprises me, if I was wrong).
However. So far my opinion. I am not professional, and I am not familiar
with many parts of Common Lisp. I was just bored and thought I could
write this here.
MfG CSS
······@gmail.com wrote:
> Everyone talks about how great Lisp is. Are there any studies or
> objective statistics that support this?
If you spend serious time with Lisp you will eventually
have a series of minor epiphanies. If that is important to
you (learning), then you should role up your sleeves and
get dirty and forget about scrounging around for "proof,"
whatever that is. Your /mind/ will change; do you think
there's a statistic for that? If there is, I need mine
measured. If you have no intention of expanding the way you
think of program development, or just want to do a little
dabbling, then you should probably stop now. You wont learn
much by coding VB in Lisp. You have to be open minded, or
the lessons will not avail. It's Zen-like; the Sixth House
of Zen, if you will.
Prolog is another sick language (in the good sense). I
wouldn't want to do any large program in it, but it bends
the mind if you haven't been exposed to this type of
programming before. Norvig opens the kimono, so to speak,
and lets you take a peek at how Prolog works, so the magic
goes away. But that's how you learn to choose the proper
technique for the job at hand. Prolog is getting a little
long in the tooth, but it's really easy to learn because
it's a small language. I think the modern reincarnation or
Prolog is Erlang, which you may find more appealing, simply
because it has excellent lightweight communications built in.