C - eunichs

[ian@iexist.att.com (Ian Bruce)]

There seems to be a tendancy to equate lisp to a symbolics development
environment. I could, given the genius which SYmbolics initially had
and several years to do it, probably create a similar environment (with
all the fault tolerance -- and bugs) on a UNIX box. In fact, many of the
best lisp hackers I know already work on SUNs. Lisp has come a long way
with CommonLisp and CLOS, etc., but for production software for many
applications, the image is too large and the (not well written Lisp code)
is too slow. We deliver Lisp on SUNs via AKCL (which generates C, by the
way). C is a great assembly language for integration of systems written
in higher level languages (e.b., SDL, lex, yacc, CL). Lisp is not the
only language that gives you leverage -- it may be the most powerful and
most general.

The people who use software are not just the people who write it! I
cannot ask a customer to buy an XL1200 to run my application, I can
justify it for developing the application. We are a long way from the
day when lisp will be generally used for application development until
the problems of size and speed are well resolved.

Ian