From: marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu (Marco Antoniotti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: COBOL is a mainstream language. So what? (was Re: Lisp vs English)
Date: 27 Jan 93 14:50:08
Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
	<19930127153328.7.SWM@SUMMER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
	<1k6fec$9c8@agate.berkeley.edu>
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In-reply-to: fateman@peoplesparc.Berkeley.EDU's message of 27 Jan 1993 17:06:20 GMT

OK, I'll jump in!

In article <1k6fec$9c8@agate.berkeley.edu> fateman@peoplesparc.Berkeley.EDU (Richard Fateman) writes:


   Lisp is not a mainstream language, but COBOL is. Perhaps BASIC also.
   (You may think C and Fortran are mainstream, but I'm not sure how
   you are measuring.)  COBOL is, in some ways being replaced by
   "4th generation languages".  Not by C or C++. Certainly not by LISP.

   How come?
   1. COBOL is standardized.  (CL is getting that way, maybe.)

Common Lisp IS getting that way and EULISP too.

   Demonstrations of superiority in a niche -- the way the 4GLs are
   displacing COBOL -- may be the way to broaden the appeal of CL(OS)...
   Write truly great programs in Lisp to solve important and
   widespread problems -- and rely on Lisp in such a way that the
   program can't be rewritten in C "to save space/time/money..".

I perfectly agree with this.

   Symbolic mathematics programs like Macsyma and Reduce looked like this,
   until people wrote similar systems in C (Maple, Mathematica).

But not with this second point. If you check the low level guts of
Mathematica (e.g. to interface it with some C++, Fortran or COBOL code
through the remote evaluation facilities - I do not know about Maple),
you will recognize that its core is actually.... a Lisp interpreter.

Somebody else already pointed this out. But the flame about syntax is TOTALLY
pointless. The REAL problems with CL(OS) are well known and none of them
has to do with syntax. They have all surfaced in this flame. My
personal opinio is that now there are better conditions to make CL(OS) a
more widespread language. This has happened because of a number of
historical reasons:

- CMU CL(OS) was not available until a little more than a year ago. If you
  wanted CL(OS) performance you had to go to a Lisp vendor. I have nothing
  against Lisp vendors, but the price difference was all there.

- WCL now addresses the problem of CL(OS) in a UNIX environment.

- Until a month ago there was NO commercial implementation of CL(OS) on
  PC's at a reasonable price. (Somebody has correctly pointed out that
  installing a C++ on a PC is not something that you do with two
  diskettes anymore). The best commercial implementations available on PC
  purportedly offer better development environment than any C++
  environment on the same platform.

There are other reasons to believe that CL(OS) has now better chances than
only two years ago.

As far as I am concerned I still believe that Lisp's have some edge on
different languages as far as the programming process is taken into
account. If I must program in C/C++ I'll do it. As well as COBOL.

Having said so, I conclude agreeing with those who pointed out that
the ~R directive is too much English-centric (or English-centered ?!?
:).
I want a Swaili version of ~R in the standard.

Have a nice day
--
Marco Antoniotti
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp