OFF-TOPIC:: Why Lisp is not my favorite programming language

[Russell Lear]

Stephen Horne wrote:

> On 6 Apr 2004 13:58:45 -0700, nish20 at netzero.net (Mike Nishizawa)
> wrote:
> 
>>mintiSPAMBLOCK at yahoo.com (Minti) wrote in message
>>news:<e87fc4b0.0403221114.254b7ee5 at posting.google.com>...
> 
>>> However when some one says that the code might be 31.?
>>> times slower as compared to C, kinda of scares me. Could assert such
>>> figures. I know speed is not the one and only goal but just wondering
>>> if these figures are correct.
> 
> It wouldn't surprise me. LISP is normally interpreted - maybe always,
> though I'm not certain of that. The interpreter would be written in C.
> And, depending on the implementation, the built-in list operations may
> well be much more basic than those in Python, for instance, meaning
> that more of the relatively sophisticated operations will be handled
> using interpreted library code.

I'm not sure what version of LISP you're talking about here, but modern LISP
implementations are actually quite efficient.  I've run a web server
implemented in Scheme (a Lisp varient) with the equivalent of JSP pages -
and I believe performance would compare favorably with the equivalent Java
or Python.  Not that I'd take on IIS or Apache, but they suffice for many
situations.  (I know that FranzLisp offers an Enterprise version.  But
there's too many digits in the price tag for me to bring one home.)

I've also written some graphics programs and they performed as well as Java. 
(again, I wouldn't try to re-implement a 3D video game in it, but it did ok
for menus, card games or turtle graphics).

Certainly LISP started out as a list processing language, but it's grown up
in the last 40 years.  The Lisp programmer has access to hashtables, trees
and the usual OO tools of inheritance, polymorphism, macros, etc.  And, if
specialized or high-performance libraries are needed, most Lisp
implementations provide for extensions similar in concept to Python's.

I'm not pushing a Lisp agenda here - I actually prefer Python - but I don't
think people should dismiss Lisp as being a language suitable only (or
mainly) for list processing.  

Russell.