Re: OT: Programming Languages (Was: Spell Checking for Non European Languages, and for Conlangs)

Chris Palmer scripsit:

> Lisp code *is* a literal tree (parentheses demarcate subtrees); a Lisp
> program is a huge tree of expressions.
All practical Lisp programs are broken down into separate trees, where
each tree is no larger than a function in any other programming language,
and often smaller.

> Also, given that real-world computers are
> machines that execute flat lists of instructions, the "impedance
> mismatch" between how Lisp structures code and how the machine works
> results in Lisp code being orders of magnitude slower than code written
> in a language that more closely reflects the way the machine works.
>
> Lisp people: please flame me off-list, if you have to flame me. ;)
I won't flame, I'll simply post pointers to the refutation of this:

http://home.comcast.net/~bc19191/blog/040308.html
http://openmap.bbn.com/~kanderso/performance/

And here's a pointer to the virtues of Lisp:

http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/lisp.html

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
Any sufficiently-complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc,
informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
	--Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (rules 1-9 are unknown)