Author: Gareth McCaughan
Date: 18:02:54 02/19/04
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On February 16, 2004 at 22:02:10, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> My primary point was speed. Lisp is slow. It always was slow. >>> It always will be slow. ... >>> LISP is like a host of other programming languages that have their place. >>> Prolog. Snobol4. Even COBOL. And used in their place, they work well. >>> But high-performance computing is _not_ their "place". >> >> Just so that we know how much weight to give to this statement >> (in comparison, say, with what Tord Romstadt has been saying), >> could you briefly summarize your experience with Lisp in the >> last 10 years? Thanks. > > Last time I used lisp was about 1992-1993, working on a natural language > parser. However, I don't see what that has to so with the price of rice > in Thailand... > I haven't programmed a Cray in Assembly language in 10 years, but I can > tell you _exactly_ what the strong points of the machine are, today... But you demonstrably cannot tell us exactly what the strong points of Lisp are, today. Because you say that Lisp is slow and always will be slow, and that is simply untrue unless you use "slow" to mean "not quite as fast as well written C". It's certainly dramatically more suitable for high-performance computing than Prolog, Snobol or Cobol. (Actually, for some definitions of "high-performance computing" Cobol may be quite suitable. I'd guess that there are implementations out there that can make payroll software run very fast.) > I also haven't programmed in FORTRAN since about 1994, when we retired Cray > Blitz. Care to have a FORTRAN battle of programming skills? Nope; the last time I wrote anything in Fortran was longer ago than 1994, and I was never an expert. :-) > So, again, your point would be??? That *in general* not having used a programming language for over a decade correlates pretty well with not being up to speed on its strengths and weaknesses, and those of its implementations. Clearly there are exceptions. If something hasn't changed in that decade then it doesn't matter if you're out of touch with it. And if you take an interest in it then you may have a very clear idea of where it's at despite not using it actively. However, (1) Lisp implementations have got a lot better over the last decade, and (2) I conjecture that you haven't followed the technical progress of the language and its implementations as closely as you have that of Fortran or the Cray machines. > We are talking about _efficiency_ of the executable, not about efficiency > of the programmer... Yes, I know. I'm not sure what I said that sounded like I hadn't grasped that, but I'm sorry if I misled you. -- g
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