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From: tfb@ed.ac.uk (Tim Bradshaw)
Subject: Re: Why is Lisp not more widely used?
In-Reply-To: Blake McBride's message of 14 Aug 1995 12:38:44 GMT
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Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 16:35:13 GMT
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* Blake McBride wrote:
> The people involved with lisp appear to be only concerned with
> academic use of lisp.  They seem to snub their noses at commercial
> users.  Case in point - the maintainers of GCL and CLISP, two
> fundamentally portable systems, insist on making their systems
> incompatible with mainstream hardware for absolutely NO REASON.

I think you actually mean `the people involved in writing free /
academic lisp systems' here.  Well, yes, those people are indeed
interested in academic uses of Lisp: they are generally academics,
it's what they're paid to do.  The people involved in commercial Lisp
systems are more interested in commercial uses.

> CLISP uses variable argument C macros (not ANSI C) and functions and
> modules so large that they can not be compiled by any commercial
> compiler.  The requirement for these two features (only available with
> GCC) is totally arbitrary and only serves to keep commercial users
> away from CLISP.  There is NO NECESSITY for these requirements!  Their
> attitude is that any compiler which can't handle those two features is
> garbage.

I don't know about variable argument macros, but are commercial C
compilers still written with arbitrary table size limits all over
them?  It's sad if so, and yes, such compilers are basically garbage,
aren't they?

> [...]

> GCL on the other hand insists on loading object files.  Thats nice on
> the x number of supported unix systems, however, why require it??!!
> Can't they put the stuff in a library, compile lisp -> C -> obj and
> link the whole thing in a conventional and portable way?  A simple
> change which would make GCL entirely portable and allow GCL's usage in
> commercial environments.

This could of course be done, but it doesn't give you the kind of
resident Lisp environment that is what people like to use for using
lisp in its traditional academic / research type environment: I would
find such a Lisp rather hard to use for instance.  I'm sure you could
pay someone to support the more common compile-link-go cycle.


So the free / academic Lisp systems don't hack it for commercial
systems, surprise! Your obvious choice is to buy a commercial,
supported, Lisp, the same way I assume you buy a commercial,
supported, C compiler, isn't it?  If you are working on some platform
where there is no such Lisp available, then you are in the same
position as if you are working on a platform where there is no such C
compiler: you need to pay for a supported port, or perhaps pay someone
to support one of the free Lisp systems, the way commercial people now
support GNU stuff.  What is so strange or odd about this?  There are
no free lunches.

--tim

