Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: Comparison: Beta - Lisp
Message-ID: <CwB2x1.Gnn@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: SAIC AI Lab, JHU P/T CS Faculty
References: <35cqdb$4k4@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <sooRsc1w165w@sytex.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 03:27:01 GMT
Lines: 43

In article <sooRsc1w165w@sytex.com> smcl@sytex.com (Scott McLoughlin) writes:
>schumach@ricotta.cs.wisc.edu (Lee Schumacher) writes:
>
>> Of course from the faculties point of view, they don't want to teach
>> lisp (thats manual labor, to their eyes), they want to teach AI.  The
>> end result is that lisp gets shorted in school, so when the graduates
>> of this program get out into the real world lisp is never seriously
>> considered for any job at hand - its too esoteric, too academic, too
>> damn *hard*...
[...]
>        Ok - to sum up as best I can you're reply (thanks):  Lisp is
>not used "in the trenches" (not particularly time/space intensive apps -
>about 95% of the code hacked out there) because Lisp is not taught well
>to CS types in college. It is therefore "too hard" a language to use.
>        I'm not sure that I agree.

I don't think this is the only reason, but I do agree that one problem
is Lisp education. My experience (doing AI and working with AI/Lisp
programmers in industry for 8 years and teaching AI and Lisp
programming for 6 years) has been that Lisp is frequently taught only
to illustrate AI concepts. In fact, I am guilty of that myself in
my Intro AI course to part-time MS students I teach. I just want to
give enough for them to try out things they've been introduced
to. There really isn't much time to point out many issues, so I have
to save that for my AI Programming course. This problem is all the
worse for the faculty without backgrounds in "serious" Lisp
programming and who don't have the desire I do to promote Lisp.

I've seen very, very, very few people who had a Lisp course that even
talked about efficiency issues, was careful to discuss the costs of
using linked lists, talked about GC issues and boxed data types,
and so forth. People aren't [usually] taught Lisp; they're taught AI
with a little Lisp thrown in along the way.

>1. Scheme seems to be an increasingly popular intro CS language. [...]

I hope you are correct wrt the "increasingly" part. It is certainly
true at some enlightened institutions. But my experience with people
doing Lisp work in industry has brought me in contact with very, very,
few people with this type of introduction. Other people's experiences
may vary, of course.
					- Marty
(proclaim '(inline skates))
