Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!uunet!sytex!smcl
From: smcl@sytex.com (Scott McLoughlin)
Subject: Re: Prefix vs. Infix?
Message-ID: <Bwo7Vc3w165w@sytex.com>
Sender: bbs@sytex.com
Organization: Sytex Access Ltd.
References: <3ara1r$50b@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 08:46:34 GMT
Lines: 75

berglas@cs.uq.oz.au (Anthony Berglas) writes:

> 
> If Lisp isn't dead its dying fast.  Sure there are a dedicated few,
> but if a language is not mainstream or fashionable it will not be
> supported by solid tools, and thus not useful.  Lisp has recently lost
> Garnet, Classic and will lose Loom to C++.
> 

Howdy,
        I think it depends on one's point of view; view of the
market, that is. I'm a young'n who came to learn Lisp rather
late. My background is 100% DOS PC's and Unix workstations
used to run RDBMS's. I've hacked on both fairly extensively
due to some nice turns of fate in Pascal, C, C++, AWK,
Sybase, Smalltalk, sed, troff macros (strange but true) -
all for real money.  I've also worked in shops with other
folks hacking the popular 4GL's on DOS machines: dBase,
Paradox and more recently Access and VB.
        I call this background "the trenches". It gets
worse, perhaps, but it's pretty day to day. In this 
market, you see all sorts of languages come and go. Around
1987, popular rags were proclaiming the death of BASIC, and
indeed it looked pretty pale. Pascal was the BASIC killer.
Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot with the intro
and phenomenal success of VB. Similarly, dBase seemed 
invincible (it was even ported to many platforms and a
sort of "standard" termed xBase was cobbled together),
etc.
        Viewed from this perspective, a language that's
been around since 1955 and still has commercial firms
marketing compilers and _doesn't_ enjoy a large base
of mission critical code (Fortran, COBOL) says alot
about the language! Point #1.
        Another point is that I've seen a fair amount
of "market reaction" to hype and promotion. I think that
C and C++ are _very_ nice languages; but fact is C++
caught the OOP wave and was "forced down the throats"
of rather unawares consumers in the trenches. I've seen
whole teams of programmers fired who didn't have the
technical ability to manage a language like C++; only
later did management discover that they could not afford
to keep any programmer who did!  Fact is, C++ was heavy
overkill for the task at hand. But who can resist the
glory of "OOP" at such a low entry cost (compiler cost
and required machine resources)????  In this sense, 
"forced down the throats". Point #2.
        So where does that leave us?  Lisp has alot
of the "expressive power" of C/C++ but with a much
safer runtime environment, nifty macro facillities,
a very fancy object system, fancy RTTI, and all the
other niceties of Lisp. In other words, Lisp is still
Lisp.  
        Now Lisp, with many other other languages, 
seems to have been caught "unwares" by the popularity
of small personal computers. Other languages perfect
for small computers were caught unawares by the
growth of operating systems and resources on these
PC's; Forth, for example.  The platform seems to be
settling down, and we're beginning to see non-C/C++
languages properly targeted at the "sweet spot" of
the market; Allegro's CL PC for Windows for example
and Apple's upcoming Dylan.
        I think these products will do _fine_ if
properly marketed. Smalltalk, which you mention,
as well.  The consumers in the trenches are starting
to survey their recent acquisitions (C++, RDBMS's,VB)
and review their options. There are better tools out
there, there are more coming, and they'll buy them
if you tickle their fancy.

=============================================
Scott McLoughlin
Conscious Computing
=============================================
