BIG successes of Lisp (was ...)

[mike420]

In the context of LATEX, some Pythonista asked what the big
successes of Lisp were. I think there were at least three *big*
successes.

a. orbitz.com web site uses Lisp for algorithms, etc.
b. Yahoo store was originally written in Lisp.
c. Emacs

The issues with these will probably come up, so I might as well
mention them myself (which will also make this a more balanced
post)

a. AFAIK Orbitz frequently has to be shut down for maintenance
(read "full garbage collection" - I'm just guessing: with
generational garbage collection, you still have to do full
garbage collection once in a while, and on a system like that
it can take a while)

b. AFAIK, Yahoo Store was eventually rewritten in a non-Lisp.
Why? I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you :)

c. Emacs has a reputation for being slow and bloated. But then
it's not written in Common Lisp.

Are ViaWeb and Orbitz bigger successes than LATEX? Do they
have more users? It depends. Does viewing a PDF file made
with LATEX make you a user of LATEX? Does visiting Yahoo
store make you a user of ViaWeb?

For the sake of being balanced: there were also some *big*
failures, such as Lisp Machines. They failed because
they could not compete with UNIX (SUN, SGI) in a time when
performance, multi-userism and uptime were of prime importance.
(Older LispM's just leaked memory until they were shut down,
newer versions overcame that problem but others remained)

Another big failure that is often _attributed_ to Lisp is AI,
of course. But I don't think one should blame a language
for AI not happening. Marvin Mins ky, for example,
blames Robotics and Neural Networks for that.

[Ray Dillinger]

Paul Rubin wrote:

David Steuber <da***********@ verizon.net> writes:

If even XEmacs is ported over to Common Lisp in my lifetime I will be
surprised. If it happens to GNU Emacs, surprise will not be enough
and I will have to resort to astonishment.

I'm not thinking of the core code. I'm thinking of all those *.el
files floating around the universe.

Plans have been to convert Emacs to use a Scheme dialect with hacks to
support old .el files.

I have seen a translator written in scheme to convert el files
to scheme automatcially. I don't know how good it is or whether
it's ready to go, but it was basically source-to-source
compilation using a chained series of thunks as the output.

And of course, there's an emacs-alike editor called 'edwin' that is
coded directly in scheme. I don't know whether it runs any .el
files, but I think that it doesn't.

Bear

[dan]

Edi Weitz <ed*@agharta.de > wrote in message news:<87******* *****@bird.agha rta.de>...
[yada yada...]

"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish
thing."

(Anatol France)

Did you know that Anatole France had one of the smallest brains on
record? See for instance:

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=166

search for 'anatole'

Slightly OT I guess, but these threads get boring fast.

ps on the topic -- any language that *requires* bloatware like Emacs
in order to use is already out of the running. I wrote my first large
Python program in Wordpad.

[Raymond Wiker]

da*******@yahoo .com (dan) writes:

Edi Weitz <ed*@agharta.de > wrote in message news:<87******* *****@bird.agha rta.de>...
[yada yada...]

"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish
thing."

(Anatol France)

Did you know that Anatole France had one of the smallest brains on
record? See for instance:

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.cfm?DocID=166

search for 'anatole'

Slightly OT I guess, but these threads get boring fast.

ps on the topic -- any language that *requires* bloatware like Emacs
in order to use is already out of the running. I wrote my first large
Python program in Wordpad.

Jesus. Are you bragging about using a non-editor on a non-OS?

Calling Emacs "bloatware" when you're using Windows seems more
than a little bit silly.

--
Raymond Wiker Mail: Ra***********@f ast.no
Senior Software Engineer Web: http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA Phone: [phone]
P.O. Box 1677 Vika Fax: [phone]
NO-0120 Oslo, NORWAY Mob: [phone]

Try FAST Search: http://alltheweb.com/

[Thomas F. Burdick]

Raymond Wiker <Ra***********@ fast.no> writes:

da*******@yahoo .com (dan) writes:

Did you know that Anatole France had one of the smallest brains on
record?

Oh *hell* no. Phrenetics?!?! That pretty much disqualifies anyone
within two degrees of you from being taken seriously.
Jesus. Are you bragging about using a non-editor on a non-OS?

This fool was talking about nonsense that's been discredited for 80
years, and 20 years in the popular press (cf. The Mismeasure of Man).
I wouldn't be surprised if it was bragging that 2 + 2 = -17.

--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'

[Bruce Hoult]

In article <fb************ **************@ posting.google. com>,
da*******@yahoo .com (dan) wrote:

ps on the topic -- any language that *requires* bloatware like Emacs
in order to use is already out of the running. I wrote my first large
Python program in Wordpad.

~bruce$ ls -l `which emacs`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4596224 Sep 24 04:29 /usr/bin/emacs
~bruce$ ls -l /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ X/Microsoft\ Word
-rwxr-xr-x 1 bruce admin 10568066 Sep 26 2002
/Applications/Microsoft Office X/Microsoft Word
Uhh, dude ... emacs is less than half the size of Word...
Sorry, don't have Wordpad on this Mac.
And don't bother to quote me the size of Wordpad on W2k or XP ... most
of it is built into the operating system, just as IE and WMP and the
rest of them are.

-- Bruce

[Raymond Wiker]

tf*@famine.OCF. Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:

Raymond Wiker <Ra***********@ fast.no> writes:

da*******@yahoo .com (dan) writes:

> Did you know that Anatole France had one of the smallest brains on
> record?

Oh *hell* no. Phrenetics?!?! That pretty much disqualifies anyone
within two degrees of you from being taken seriously.

Jesus. Are you bragging about using a non-editor on a non-OS?

This fool was talking about nonsense that's been discredited for 80
years, and 20 years in the popular press (cf. The Mismeasure of Man).
I wouldn't be surprised if it was bragging that 2 + 2 = -17.

Maybe we should all chip in and book him a session at a good
retrophrenologi st's?[1]
Footnotes:
[1] See
http://shorty.wz.cz/download/pratche...rms.htm#_ftn15[2]

[2] Better yet, but the book.

--
Raymond Wiker Mail: Ra***********@f ast.no
Senior Software Engineer Web: http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA Phone: [phone]
P.O. Box 1677 Vika Fax: [phone]
NO-0120 Oslo, NORWAY Mob: [phone]

Try FAST Search: http://alltheweb.com/

[Espen Vestre]

Bruce Hoult <br***@hoult.or g> writes:

Sorry, don't have Wordpad on this Mac.

It's pretty small, a little smaller than vi, actually:

ev@liten:~$ ls -l /mnt/vfat/Program\ Files/Accessories/WORDPAD.EXE
-rwxrwxr-x 1 ev ev 204800 Apr 23 1999 /mnt/vfat/Program Files/
Most needles are also small. That doesn't make them suitable as
chopsticks.
--
(espen)

[Pascal Costanza]

David Mertz wrote:

Python does a good job of expressing all the basic
*programming* constructs that go into ANY programming domain: loops,
branches, collections, objects and inheritence, HOFs, declared
constraints, etc. I have no expectation of EVER seeing some new problem
area that isn't built out of these same application parts.

How do you justify your expectation? What's the rationale?
Pascal

[Takehiko Abe]

In article <fb************ **************@ posting.google. com>,
da*******@yahoo .com (dan) wrote:

ps on the topic -- any language that *requires* bloatware like Emacs
in order to use is already out of the running. I wrote my first large
Python program in Wordpad.

Good point! I always thought that Python's popularity stems from
that special property of the language. It relieves the vendors
from writing special editors for the language and shift the burden
to the user. Particularly attractive for embedding it as a
scripting language for an application.

However I don't agree that CL requires bloatware as big as
Emacs. You need only a small portion of Emacs for lisp editing.
Still it is going to be much more work than writing a WordPad
though.

[Paolo Amoroso]

dan writes:

ps on the topic -- any language that *requires* bloatware like Emacs
in order to use is already out of the running. I wrote my first large
Python program in Wordpad.

No big deal: all text editors are ex-complete.
Paolo
--
Paolo Amoroso <am*****@mclink .it>