Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!netcom14.netcom.com!sgml
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Subject: Re: A Dylan implemented on Common Lisp
Message-ID: <3004005610.030936@naggum.no>
Sender: sgml@netcom14.netcom.com
Organization: Naggum Software; +47 2295 0313
References: <473.9503110325@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 14:00:10 GMT
Lines: 33

[Jeff Dalton]

|   I write most of my program in one kind of Lisp or another.  They aren't
|   all AI progams, and the ones that are AI programs are full of things
|   that aren't AI techniques.  So I find your view rather odd.  What are
|   these AI techniques that you think go so well with Lisp?

can't answer for the poor confused chap, but it should have been obvious
that if you work with difficult concepts, you need a programming language
that is so easy to use that you don't get lost in the details of the
language.  I suspect that if you have seen nothing but hard programming
languages and simple problems, you will think that other languages will
have to be even harder if the problems are more complicated.  this
confusion seems to afflict C and C++ programmers more than others.

|   It sounds like you're actually talking about Common Lisp, and indeed
|   particular Common Lisp implementations.  (Image size varies rather
|   dramatically between implementations.)  You probably already know that
|   there are Lisps other than Common Lisp in the world (Scheme, EuLisp,
|   ISLisp, Franz Lisp, and ILOG Talk, for instance).  But a number of
|   people don't know this, or else tend to forget it when thinking about
|   "Lisp".  As a result a whole family of languages gets tarred with the
|   "large footprint" brush, which is not what I think you intended.

Wade L. Hennessey's WCL is designed to produce small footprints, and it
does, except that it lacks a few things that I use all the time, such as
rational numbers, and read and print syntax for arrays.

#<Erik>
-- 
miracle of miracles.  look what the Net dragged in.

(posted from netcom.com because Norway gets news a week late these days.)
