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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Comparing productivity: LisP against C++ (was Re: Reference Counting)
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Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 17:04:44 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c++:104552 comp.lang.lisp:16156

In article <3d9uv4$rkh@pravda.cc.gatech.edu> lyman@cc.gatech.edu (Lyman S. Taylor) writes:
>In some sense "exploratory programming" == "rapid prototyping".  You have
>heard of the latter haven't you.  
>
>"Exploratory Programming" doesn't mean that you willy-nilly sit down at the
>terminal and write you program.  It means you have a not-so-flushed-out
>design and you want to "flush out" the design by trying to implement
>the not so well understood and/or novel parts of the design.

Of course, this assumes that you can produce the 1st version quickly,
which *I*', more likekly to be able to do in Lisp than in C.  Reasons

  * Interavtive, incremental implementations.
  * Date that's easy to inspect at run-time (e.g. date includes
    its type and usually has a printed prerestnation (or else
    works with inspect/describe).
  * Don't have to worry about storage management.
  * It's easy to write macros and higher-order functions.
    (Lisp macros are more powerful than C macros).

-- jeff
