C - eunichs

[kma@SAMSON.cadr.amis.com (K. Mark Alexander)]

    Date: Tue, 22 Jan 91 15:28 CST
    From: 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.

I wish someone would get the stroke of genius to do this.  Given the
arguments I've seen on this subject it should be relatively easy to do
in C.  It's already been done once, the second time around should be
better, no?

 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