Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Common Lisp
Message-ID: <6630@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 89 01:01:15 GMT
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Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
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   OK, I just talked to a person who has knowledge of both Common Lisp
   and Ada, and here are the results.  Common Lisp is, like Ada, a very
   powerful language.  There are some problems in doing ADTs in Common
   Lisp, in that you can *define* all kinds of types, but there is not
   the type checking (the enforcement, the fulfillment of the limited
   private concept) that you get with Ada.  The other major problem is
   that there is a very low level of translator maturity, and the code
   produced is generally extremely inefficient.  

   By the way, Ted Dunning said earlier regarding Lisp: "if you want to 
   play, grab a copy of one of the pd interepreters".  I will be quite 
   happy to consider anything that will help attain the objectives of 
   the software engineering philosophy, and Common Lisp may well be 
   useful in that respect.  But engineers don't play; this is left 
   for hackers.  We're here to engineer products on time, under budget,
   and with as much quality as we can get within those two constraints.

   Software engineering is serious business.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu