Re: Lisp considered unfinished

[pjackson@falcon.ic.net (Philip Jackson)]

Dave Yost (yost@Yost.com) wrote:
: In article <neves-0206950926120001@neves.ils.nwu.edu>,
: David Neves <neves@ils.nwu.edu> wrote:
: >In article <hbaker-0206950511260001@192.0.2.1>, hbaker@netcom.com (Henry
: >Baker) wrote:
: >
: >:  From the anonymous reviews of a recent NSF proposal in which Lisp was
: >:  mentioned, but only as an incidental tool:
: >:  
: >:  "The LISP environment is really getting out of date as a viable system
: >:  environment.  Let us not pursue this line of research any more."
: >
: >Amazing.  Anything should be allowed as an incidental tool.  A researcher
: >has to pick the best language for his or her group.  Groups put a lot of
: >effort in developing a good tool set for the language they work with.  For
: >an external reviewer to base his/her decision on an incidental tool is
: >stepping out of bounds.  Faulting a dynamic language is being particularly
: >insensitive to prototyping needs of research.  The reviewer is probably
: >someone who still views Lisp as the Lisp 1.5 that some programming
: >language texts cover.

Since the reviewer was anonymous it is particularly hard to draw conclusions
about whether they view Lisp as Lisp 1.5, or to verify such conclusions.
Possibly the anonymous reviewer had a very clear understanding of the 
current state of Lisp, but was concerned about the issues of viability that
Yost mentions.

The sentence quoted is interesting because it seems to mix two concepts:
"Lisp as a viable system environment" and "Lisp as a line of research".
(Of course, the quoted sentence may really be talking about something else
as a line of research, but it brings to mind the idea that Lisp itself
has been developed as a "research language" -- a language for doing 
research about AI and other topics, and an environment for doing research
about the design of powerful programming languages.)

Possibly the reason Lisp is in the state is in today is that historically
these concepts have always been mixed, and perhaps not well balanced.
This has led to a language with the perceived efficiency and space
problems that Yost mentions.

: Denial.

: I think Lisp implementers should take this as a wake-up call.

: There are other warnings.
:   * Lucid went out of business
:   * CMUCL was abandoned, and the people are working on Dylan
:   * MCL was abandoned for 2 years before being revived
:   * The GARNET project has left lisp behind and has gone to C++.
:     It's now 3 times faster, and more people are interested in it.
: Surely there are many others.

: As far as I can tell, ANSI lisp is being treated as a huge
: plateau, as if there is nothing interesting left to do, or
: as if any further changes would be too hard to negotiate.

: What about speed?  size?  C/C++ interoperability?

: These issues have been untreated emergencies for some years now.

: Dave Yost


Perhaps the solution is to separate the concepts, not mix them, and
focus development of Lisp along three parallel paths:

1) Lisp as a viable system development platform. A subset of CLOS
that can be implemented with small memory requirements, compiles just as
efficiently as C, yet retains more value than C or C++ in terms of 
productivity and built-in language constructs.  This could be very
attractive to current systems developers.  It might even resemble
Lisp 1.5 ;)

2) Lisp as a language for research projects.  Perhaps the full CLOS as
we know it, or perhaps CLOS extended along lines that support particular
topics in AI research.

3) Lisp as a language for research about programming languages. 


Phil Jackson