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Ask Kent M. Pitman About Lisp, Scheme And More
Kent M. Pitman has been programming in Scheme and Lisp, and contributing to the design of those languages, for a long time -- 24 years. He was a technical contributor and an international representative for the ANSI subcommittee that standardized Common Lisp, and in that capacity directed the design of Lisp's error system. Scheme may be better known as a teaching language, but both Scheme and Lisp have applications (as any Emacs user knows) that go far beyond this. Now's your chance to ask him about the pros and cons of those two languages, circa 2001 A.D. Kent also has an interesting, ambivalent take on Free software that's worth noting in an atmosphere where complex issues are often oversimplified and radicalized. Since he's someone who's helped develop standards, this is perhaps a timely issue on which to probe his opinion. It's also a good time to get acquainted with things he's written, which might interest you just as much as his programming. (Soap opera parodies, anyone?) So suggest questions for Kent below (please, one per post) -- we'll pass along the highest-rated ones for him to answer, and Kent will get back soon with his answers.
I think LISP would be more readable and easier to transition to if the command was on the left side of the parenths instead of between.
How hard would it be to change the interpreter(s) for that?
Table-ized A.I.
Lisp and Scheme have long been viewed as just "Educational Languages". Do you see any future with the two languages in commercial software?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Lisp doesn't seem to get the "mind share" and media attention that some programming languages (C, Java, Perl) do. You don't see a lot of books and articles about Lisp and, with the obvious exceptions of Emacs and Sawfish, most people would have trouble naming major applications written in Lisp.
Why do you think Lisp doesn't get mentioned more in the computer press?
Similarly, can you tell us about any major applications written in Lisp, or any great Lisp success stories?