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

[Mike Nishizawa]

mintiSPAMBLOCK at yahoo.com (Minti) wrote in message news:<e87fc4b0.0403221114.254b7ee5 at posting.google.com>...
> nish20 at netzero.net (Mike Nishizawa) wrote in message news:<d771b842.0403040735.3b5200ae at posting.google.com>...
> > These posts are like big huge neon signs that say, "I'm IGNORANT."  If
> > you hold that 1 language is better than all other languages, then you
> > ARE ignorant.  LISP is a parsing language.  It's obviously not made to
> > do the same things that C is.  LISP is extremely fast for processing
> > data files.
> > 
> > C in not an end-all be-all of programming languages, even though it is
> > quite robust.  For instance, C is great if you are going to develop
> > software for 1 platform.  However, if you are developing software for
> > multiple platforms, Java is a better choice.
> > 
> > Really these discussions boil down to the programmer him/herself, who
> > is usually the one at fault for poor performance.  I'm not quite sure
> > when this happened, but at some point programmers started relying on
> > hardware for fast, efficient software and from that point on, the
> > quality and emphasis placed on writing efficient programs has
> > diminished.  If you want your code to run faster, make it more
> > efficient... make it use less resources... and use the right language
> > for the job.  Don't try to fit all things under one umbrella because
> > that language has not been developed yet.
> > 
> 
> 
> Quite valid arguments. However I have one question to ask, I am quite
> naive with LISP { just couple of weekends ) but I think the OP did
> raise some doubts in my mind. I mean to me LISP looks right now to be
> just OK. Some people said that with all the () it is difficult to code
> in but I think that with proper indentation that is absolutely
> ludicurous. 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.
> 
> 
> Thanks

I would ask what the C program is doing.  If it beats LISP at it's own
game which is, list processing, then that would be different.  I don't
think I would choose to write an enterprise application in it, but I
think it's as good a choice as anything for any type of parsing
applications.  And to the smart guy who feels like he can take a stab
at me for calling lisp a parsing language... consider:  a parser is,
by definition, something that analyzes or separates (input, for
example) into more easily processed components.  Let's take a
document, for instance.  If I wanted to parse the document and
separate it into words, I would write a parser to do so. What is a
document but a list of words separated by spaces... an especially good
application for a LISt Processing language.