Re: C vs. Lisp

[Qobi@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Mark Siskind)]

    In communities that may not consider themselves hotshot programers,
    C/Lisp hybrids such as xlisp and siod (scheme-in-one-defun) are useful
    for rapid prototyping.  Xlispstat is a variant of xlisp that is
    popular for prototyping in statistics even though it is missing things
    like a compiler and an adequate debugger.

As an aside, I have several questions:

1. What is the latest version of xlisp that is available? I have sources
for 2.0 but those are dated from several years ago.

2. Does anybody know where I can get a precompiled version of the latest
version of xlisp for MSDOS? I just bought a laptop and don't have a C compiler
for it.

3. If I couldn't get a precompiled version of xlisp for MSDOS, does anybody
have any recommendations as to which C compiler to buy? What are the
price/performace/feature distinctions considering that the main reason of
purchase would be to compile xlisp, though I might do some C programming on
the side?

4. What is siod and where can I get a copy?
        Thanks,
        Jeff