
Building Large Systems in Lisp (2010) - momo-reina
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.clojure.user/34269
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norswap
>In Java I need "factory objects", "visitors", and other such pieces of
"design patterns". In lisp, I have never needed to write a "factory". The
whole "visitor" pattern becomes a 1-line (map...) call.

You don't need any of those things, although they (regrettably) certainly are
in the culture.

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amelius
> So, yes, lisp does not HAVE a lot of libraries. But what people miss is that
> lisp doesn't NEED libraries.

This sounds a bit overly optimistic to me...

~~~
copsarebastards
> I am the lead developer on Axiom which is a very large lisp project (about 1
> million things of code) to do computer algebra. The help system and graphics
> were implemented in C but browsers did not exist at the time (1970s). These
> are being reimplemented in lisp using Firefox and the canvas facility.

> In the past I helped develop a product for building rule-based programs
> which was sold by IBM. It was entirely in lisp.

> I helped develop an expert system (FAME, a Finance and Marketing Expert) to
> price and sell IBM mainframe hardware. It was written entirely in lisp.

> I developed a language (KROPS) which was a symmetric representation of a
> knowledge language (KREP, Knowledge Representation) and a rule-based
> language (OPS5 A rule-based language). It was entirely in lisp.

> I developed a robot planning program to build and assemble objects from
> their computer-aided design descriptions (BOXER - A Design- to-Build
> system). It was entirely in lisp.

This sounds a bit like if he hasn't needed libraries yet, lisp probably
doesn't need libraries.

~~~
rodw
This is an impressive list, but it sounds like these programs are all within
the same general category, and that category is a particular sweet-spot for
lisp.

I think when people complain about a lack of library support in lisp they
aren't looking for libraries for symbolic manipulation but for more mundane
things.

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agumonkey
I searched for this so many times. I thought it was a blog post, not a ML one.

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AnimalMuppet
I presume that "graph" here means "data structure" rather than "graphics". I
could see creating the data structure in Lisp code just in passing, with no
library needed. Easy. Computer graphics? Not so much.

