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From:  <larso171@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Q: Is Lisp obsolete?
Message-ID: <92582.larso171@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
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Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 05:09:45 GMT
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My opinion of Lisp is that it is the only general purpose language that 
makes exploratory work easy.  And that seems to be important in 
evolutionary programming (EP) work (i.e. GA, GP, ES, etc.) -- where one 
needs to explore different approaches and representations to tackle tough 
problems, include as much problem specific knowledge as possible, and 
perhaps combine it with some ideas from traditional operational research 
approaches to the problem.

Also, since in Lisp, code <=> data, it seems the easiest language to try 
evolving rules.  Lisp makes it easy to try out new ideas quickly, because 
of its interpreted environment, weak typing, and because its very easy to 
create data structures on the fly.

The disadvantage of Lisp is that it is slow executing, and certainly that 
is a disadvantage in very heavy numerically computational work involved in 
most evolutionary programming approaches.  So it seems that Lisp is not 
well - suited for a final product.  

I'm very interested in what others think about Lisp in evolutionary 
programming work.  Do you use a different language for prototyping ideas 
than the one (presumably C/C++?) for final "production" code?

(Let me admit I don't do any prototyping in Lisp, but rather in 
Mathematica, which includes most elements of Lisp.  By the say, while I'm 
thinking about it, Mathematica's Mathsource code repository has a "basic" 
Genetic Programming package, but I haven't looked into it yet.)  However, 
I'm wondering whether to learn more about Lisp.

Thanks

Jim Larson

