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 References:Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu Lines: 22 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