Wizard1988

The other day I found an ebook on Lisp(Common Lisp) and I find the language quite interesting. It is totally different from all the other languages I have ever toyed around with. I am curious about what you guys thing about this language and if any of you folks have experienced this language.

DaWei

I have not written in Lisp since about 1991. At that time it was the foundation for AutoCad (might still be, I don't know). It is a language whose forte is list processing. I found it to be very interesting, also. I would suspect, without investigating, that recent, more abstract, languages (such as Python), would be entirely as effective. Here's to your car and cdr .

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Arevos

What I find interesting about Lisp is that it's about as close to an AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) as one can realistically get in a programming language. This blurs the line between data and code so much so that there isn't really any distinction between the two in Lisp. The only thing I particularly dislike about Lisp is CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System.

v0id

Like DaWei said, List Processing.

It looks kind a hard to find out in the start, but if you're going in deep with it, it's nice.
I know some few there use it, and it should be a strong language.
It's also a very old language, it's from about '58.

http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
http://planet.lisp.org/

Arevos

Only in the same way that C is a language whose forte is number processing. In C, everything is essentially a number, or sequence of numbers; similarly, in Lisp, everything is a list, or a member of a list. To say that Lisp's forte is list processing is technically accurate, but it rather misses the point.

DaWei

What was my point? The OP asked if anyone had ever experienced it and what they thought of it.

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Arevos

Well, saying "[Lisp] is a language whose forte is list processing" might give people the wrong impression, since unless you're familiar with Lisp, one might assume it's a language that has a niche specialisation. It's no more a specialist language than C, Java or Python.

That was the only real issue I had

DaWei

Ah, well, I was using it to process AutoCad lists, and it was called "List Processor". It didn't appear to be effective at making a money-order dispenser with an 8085, which is the other thang I wuz adoin' at the time.

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Yegg

I've experienced CL before. I've used CLISP, SBCL, CMU CL, GCL, and a few others. I highly dislike the idea of having such an unnecessary mass of functions that are part of the CL standard. For this reason I choose Scheme as my primary language. I like the style better, the idea of being a minimalist, and generally being easier to read than CL in many cases (IMO).

Scheme is an amazing language. I recommend you check it out. It seems that Petite Chez Scheme (Chez Scheme alone costs ~$1000 USD (for personal), thus we go with free (Petite)) is the most powerful Scheme available. You can get Petite from scheme.com. The site has the Scheme language book available for purchasing and for reading online (as HTML?). They also have the book for Chez specific operations.

Petite comes with everything Chez does, with the exception of Chez having the ability to compile to executable applications.

Mad_guy

I've used Lisp before, and I really really liked the language. I dunno, it really appealed to me than most others. Call it an unexplainable attraction. Awesome language as far as I'm concerned.

__________________
os: mac os 10.5.4
revision control: git
editor: emacs

site