From: yost@Yost.com (Dave Yost) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.mcl,comp.lang.lisp.franz,comp.lang.lisp.x,comp.lang.clos Subject: Lisp considered unfinished Date: 2 Jun 1995 09:35:15 -0700 Organization: Dave Yost's house Message-ID: <3qnek3$mk@Yost.com> References: In article , David Neves wrote: >In article , hbaker@netcom.com (Henry >Baker) wrote: > >: From the anonymous reviews of a recent NSF proposal in which Lisp was >: mentioned, but only as an incidental tool: >: >: "The LISP environment is really getting out of date as a viable system >: environment. Let us not pursue this line of research any more." > >Amazing. Anything should be allowed as an incidental tool. A researcher >has to pick the best language for his or her group. Groups put a lot of >effort in developing a good tool set for the language they work with. For >an external reviewer to base his/her decision on an incidental tool is >stepping out of bounds. Faulting a dynamic language is being particularly >insensitive to prototyping needs of research. The reviewer is probably >someone who still views Lisp as the Lisp 1.5 that some programming >language texts cover. Denial. I think Lisp implementers should take this as a wake-up call. There are other warnings. * Lucid went out of business * CMUCL was abandoned, and the people are working on Dylan * MCL was abandoned for 2 years before being revived * The GARNET project has left lisp behind and has gone to C++. It's now 3 times faster, and more people are interested in it. Surely there are many others. As far as I can tell, ANSI lisp is being treated as a huge plateau, as if there is nothing interesting left to do, or as if any further changes would be too hard to negotiate. What about speed? size? C/C++ interoperability? These issues have been untreated emergencies for some years now. Dave Yost @ .com