Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: dp@world.std.com (Jeff DelPapa)
Subject: Re: Lisp is alive
Message-ID: <DyzMEo.HC8@world.std.com>
Organization: Chaos and Confusion
References: <3052746344930826@naggum.no> <844612962snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk> <joswig-ya023180000710961702220001@news.lavielle.com> <844717159snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 02:47:12 GMT
Lines: 55

In article <844717159snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk>,
Cyber Surfer <cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <joswig-ya023180000710961702220001@news.lavielle.com>
>           joswig@lavielle.com "Rainer Joswig" writes:
>
>> > before is: who knows this? How many people know that HotMetal was
>> > written in Lisp?
>> 
>> Only parts of it were written in Lisp.
>
>The fact that some parts were written in Lisp should be
>significant enough. VB apps tend not to be written entirely
>in VB, but we can still consider the VB parts as more
>significant.
> 

There are two other products out there that the "real world" is using,
and have in their markets, gotten good reviews.  Both are from
Harlequin, one is called Watson, it is a PC data visulization tool,
that is sold to police and other "investigative" types.  It seems to
be doing well with a mostly computer illiterate audience.  The other
is webmaker, which reads frame documentents, and spits out HTML.  It
has recieved a fair amount of posiitive press. (I have no idea how
many users either product has).

One point that I have made before:  Do we want lisp to be truly
widespread?  I have been building commercial products in lisp for the
better part of 15 years now. (things like factory capacity planning
tools, and IC design suites)  One thing I noticed is that using lisp
lets me get them built with far smaller development staff's, or in
less time given identical staff's.  Can you say competitive advantage?
Unfortunately development costs are an ever shrinking part of product
cost, so this isn't the lever it once was.  Still, if I can get
something to market before the other guy, I am at an advantage now.

The CAD suite was built with 35 man years of labor.  This had
schematic entry, a full layout editor, with automatic construction of
devices (and this did more than just fets, this was an analog design
tool), a block router, a thermal annealing packing tool, simulation
(two, one high accuracy "spice" and a block level "functional"
simulation), and design rule checking.  The C/C++ crowd puts more
labor into just one of those tools.

BTW: Size isn't an argument anymore.  MS Visual C++ is some 250 MB if
you take the "no, I don't want to run from CD" option.  The unix
lisp's are at their largest 50mb. (and some are smaller than the 30mb
"minimum" install of VC++, where everything comes off the CD. Anyone
know the minimum no CD install? I remember something like ~70mb)  I
will also argue that you really have to count some of the OS in the
product size.  My 45 mb lispm images included the OS, Emacs, compiler,
mailer, mail reader, hypertext browser, DNS, file server, etc.

<dp>

Yes, I work for Harlequin now,  No I am not speaking for them, or
