Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site bcsaic.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!shebs From: shebs@bcsaic.UUCP (stan shebs) Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Re: AIList Digest V3 #86 (Comparison of C and Lisp) Message-ID: <176@bcsaic.UUCP> Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 13:09:35 EDT Article-I.D.: bcsaic.176 Posted: Mon Jul 8 13:09:35 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 09:18:18 EDT References: <8721@ucbvax.ARPA> Reply-To: shebs@bcsaic.UUCP (stan shebs) Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center Lines: 53 Summary: >From: Richard K. Jennings>Subject: C vs LISP > > We have continuing debates about that subject all the time, >and I think for us we have come to the conclusion (for now) that >C is better than LISP. > Currently we have MS-DOS 2.0, XLISP 2.0, and Lattice C >compiler version 2.0. XLISP is about the poorest dialect of Lisp that I know of, while Lattice C is good (so I hear). To put things on the other shoe, try comparing tiny-C to Zetalisp or Common Lisp. >Using a copy >of Winston's Lisp text, he set out with XLISP to produce this >translator. Worse and worse - especially if it was the first edition. And the second edition is Common Lisp-based! It's sort of like trying to use an Ada manual to write Pascal programs. >There is no doubt in my mind that he prefers Lattice C to XLISP. I'm a confirmed Lisp hacker, but I also prefer C to XLISP. > By September we should be using PC-AT's with GC-LISP, and the >new Microsoft C compiler. GC-LISP is only a marginal improvement over XLISP. The quotes I've seen from the AI experts are always to the effect that GC-LISP is good "for educational purposes" or for "training" - nothing about how it's adequate for production software. >The source libraries now >available in C (or Pascal, real soon now for Ada) will be increasing >difficult to beat... This is interesting - I haven't seen any evidence of C libraries that come anywhere close to what even "small" Lisps like PSL and Franz come with, let alone Zetalisp or Interlisp. Full Lisp implementations (as opposed to XLISP) come with parser generators (yacc in a library?!), very fancy iteration macros, OOP packages, pattern matchers/unifiers, elaborate interaction/debugging facilities, graphics packages (sadly nonstandardized though), sophisticated implementations of useful datatypes, and so forth. How can C or Pascal possibly get the datatype polymorphism that Lispers take for granted, and that most of these packages depend on for their usefulness? Don't judge a language by the feeble implementations that have been done for micros! stan shebs