Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log

Paolo Amoroso's weblog. Main interests: Lisp, astronomy (Moon), space exploration (Apollo and early manned programs)

Calendar of past entries | Related links

Short story on Lisp in June 2005 issue of DDJ AI Newsletter

Sunday, June 5, 2005

The June 2005 issue of Dr. Dobb's AI Newsletter includes a short story on Lisp titled like Larry Wall's famous quote "Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in".

The story mentions the book Higher Order Perl by Mark Jason Dominus and briefly explains why the quote is actually a compliment. It then tells some opinions on Lisp, including Paul Graham's (no pun intended), and commonplaces from the computing folklore.

This story probably still reflects some widely held views on Lisp (or maybe LISP), i.e. that it's more a "stretch your mind" kind of language than a language for solving actual problems in the real world. Hopefully, Peter Seibel's book is clarifying this issue a bit.