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From: hirsch@emba-news.emba.uvm.edu (Steven N. Hirsch)
Subject: Re: Help! LISP for DOS/Windows?
Message-ID: <1994Dec29.050749.28646@emba.uvm.edu>
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Date: Thu, 29 Dec 1994 05:07:49 GMT
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David Albert (dalbert@pbs.org) wrote:
: I am going to be taking a first graduate course in AI this semester
: and will be using LISP as the primary language.  I am a very experienced
: programmer using other languages including C, Modula-2, Ada, Pascal, 
: lots of ASM, etc. but I have *no* experience with LISP. 

: Can anyone recommend a good free/shareware LISP for the DOS or Windows
: platform that would be appropriate?  

For my 2-cents worth, install Linux on your machine and use one of the
numerous Lisp implementations available for that operating system.  I
just finished an undergraduate course in computer languages where we
were required to write several programs in Lisp.  AKCL (Austin-Kyoto
Common Lisp) was installed on the Suns at school, but I used a Linux
port of AKCL at home for most of the development work.  

There's a neat programming interface to the Emacs editor called Ilisp
that allows some ide-like functionality.  Highly recommended!

The hardest part of learning Lisp, for me, was keeping track of all
the parentheses!  Emacs/Ilisp does a fair-to-middlin' job of forcing
some visual structure, but I really would have appreciated an editor
that used colors to hilite the different levels of closure..  Maybe in
my spare time <g>..


