Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: tmb@netcom4.netcom.com (Thomas Breuel)
Subject: Re: case for Lisp
In-Reply-To: pg@hershey.harvard.edu's message of 5 Feb 1995 14:23:32 GMT
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References: <3h2n14$164@necco.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 1995 14:46:07 GMT
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In article <3h2n14$164@necco.harvard.edu> pg@hershey.harvard.edu (Paul Graham) writes:

   Because the question "Why Lisp?" gets asked so often, I devoted the
   first chapter of _On Lisp_ (Prentice Hall, 1993) to it.  See that for
   the kind of argument you might present to your organization.  But I
   warn you that few people are going to be convinced to use a language
   on the basis of its power.

Very true.

   The great majority of programmers are
   used to some particular language, and are only going to learn a new
   one when they are forced to.

Programmers choose languages not because of their power but because of
their utility.  Being able to write a mean 8-queens, Fibonacci, or
constraint solver doesn't matter in the UNIX market; being able to
grind through 100M text files quickly, start processes, allocate
pseudo ttys, execute UNIX-specific file-system operations, write
scripts that start up quickly, and read and write DBM files does.

In fact, I would very much like to use languages that are more
powerful than C, awk, and Perl.  Like many programmers on UNIX, I know
CommonLisp, SML, and other languages intimately.  In fact, I learned
Lisp before I learned C.  But CL just doesn't get most of my work done
effectively.  That's why it is particularly frustrating when people
like you stand up and say, in effect, "well, you aren't using CL
because you are stupid".

Of course, judging from your defense of CL, you do not seem to have a
good idea yourself where the real problems with applying CL outside
its current niches are.  So, it isn't surprising that you seek fault
with the customers and not the language and its implementations.  But
until you realize that the problem is with CL, not with the people who
aren't buying, you are never going to fix it.

				Thomas.
