

Lisp Machines in Ten Documents - parenthesis
http://lispm.dyndns.org/news?ID=NEWS-2009-04-07-1

======
mahmud
You linked to Rainer's home box on a DSL line, I hope you're happy parenthesis
:-/

Folks, please please don't crawl that site. If you see a document you like
wait a few days and download it then, or just browse it there slowly.

[Edit: He is running good ole CL-HTTP on LispWorks it seems. Rainer also has
the occassional Lisp machine serving pages sometimes; _that_ I wouldn't want
slashdoted ;-]

~~~
lispm
The page is lightweight with a reason. The documents are linked to another
server with more bandwidth (but with a slight disk problem, I hope it still
survives a bit).

More 'problematic' was comment of mine on reddit where I linked to some pages
with images. If it is slow, then it is more especially when somebody looks at
such a page.

Well, when Clinton was president, two Symbolics XL1200 and then later two DEC
Alphas running Open Genera were serving the White House Publication Server (a
part of Clinton's web presence). Those two machines did get a lot more hits
than my home site does. I had the chance to look at the live logs during the
monica levinsky scandal. ;-)

Anyway, don't crawl the site. It is for reading, not for crawling. It's up in
this way since 2003 and I hope it stays this way. Thanks. ;-)

------
Keyframe
I'm currently re-visiting SICP, as well as filmed SICP lectures:
[http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and-
interpret...](http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and-
interpretation-of-computer-programs) \- it is a nice refresh of Scheme, since
the last time I saw Scheme was when men built pyramids.

What motivated me to revisit it again is Naughty Dog's presentation on their
"new" version of Scheme scripting engine they use in Uncharted 2 (similar to
GOAL, but new, based on PLT-Scheme).

Check it out [http://www.gameenginebook.com/gdc09-statescripting-
uncharted...](http://www.gameenginebook.com/gdc09-statescripting-
uncharted2.pdf) (40 MB PDF). There is also this shorter presentation
[http://www.naughtydog.com/corporate/press/GDC%202008/Adventu...](http://www.naughtydog.com/corporate/press/GDC%202008/AdventuresInDataCompilation.pdf)
(pdf).

What I'm wondering is, now that we have multicore power, huge amount of RAM
and stuff like that - why are people so dispersed into other functional
languages when LISP has such a rich heritage? IMO wouldn't it be trivial to
run Scheme or any other LISP if you stick to functional programming? Of
course, on the other hand there is a problem of parallel algo's, but that is
another topic.

~~~
silentbicycle
Some of the other languages have capabilities that Lisp doesn't, and while
some argue that one can theoretically graft anything onto Lisp via macros,
there's something to be said for having them planned as part of the language.
Really diving into another functional language (I'd suggest OCaml or Erlang)
will influence your programming just as much as learning Scheme has, whichever
you use more in the long run. OCaml will get you thinking about when static
typing is a useful tool, and Erlang has a refreshingly sensible take on
concurrency.

The people who designed those languages weren't ignorant of Lisp, by the way.
For example, ML (i.e., SML and OCaml) was originally designed because Lisp's
dynamic typing kept leading to subtle errors in an automated theorem prover,
IIRC. The influence of Lisp on Haskell and Erlang is also pretty obvious,
particularly in the terminology. Lisp is not the end of programming language
evolution -- Scheme is just one of the most concise designs so far.

------
BrentRitterbeck
I've just started really trying to dig into Lisp. I've got a long way to go,
so please excuse me for my ignorance.

Could a modern day operating system be written in Common Lisp? Could highly
numeric code (for quant work) run as fast as C/C++?

~~~
Retric
_Could a modern day operating system be written in Common Lisp?_ Yes.

 _Could highly numeric code (for quant work) run as fast as C/C++?_

Yes, outside of extream optomizations. A good rule of thumb might be if you
are are using inline ASM then no, otherwize yes.

PS: Common LISP is not the fastest LISP dielect, for quant work you might want
something custom like GOAL.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp>)

~~~
mahmud
_PS: Common LISP is not the fastest LISP dielect, for quant work you might
want something custom like GOAL._

Telling the man to implement his own programming language isn't very helpful
now is it?

Stock Trading.

[http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/netfonds-
primetrade...](http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/netfonds-
primetrader.html)

Realtime DSP in Lisp for missile defense

[http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/raytheon-
siglab.htm...](http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/raytheon-siglab.html)

Signal Processing in audiometrics.

<http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/ral-siglab.html>

Franz (makers of Allegro Common Lisp) have even more testimonials.

<http://franz.com/success/>

There is more to life than reinventing the wheel; sometimes you just wanna get
things done.

~~~
Retric
I did not mean that he had to build it, just that CL is not the fastest LISP
dialect out there. You need to sacrifice a few features when looking for
stupid levels of speed. Still you can can use a LISP for this stuff even if
it's not CL.

~~~
mahmud
Keep in mind that GOAL was designed for deployment on a game console. Also, a
lot of the bottle-neck issues that games face are not the same as in high
performance, number crunching finance software. Games are graphics, I/O and
event processing heavy. In addition, games are compile once and give it to
thousands of people type software. While analysis software is often writen
once, but tweaked and updated by the end user very frequently. Common Lisp
would be just perfect for this type of two stage explore/optimize usage; the
development environment is posh, and the performance can get as raw as you
want it to be.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
My intentions for playing with the language is to rewrite enough of QuantLib,
a large library I feel comfortable with, for myself using Lisp so that I can
eventually run an equivalent of the Equity Options Example found in the source
download. It's just learning at this point, taking something I know and
rewriting it in a different language in order to get to know the language
better. It will take some time.

