First, Lisp is the most popular language for A1 programming, particularly in the
United States. If you're going to learn a language, it might as well be one with a
growing literature, rather than a dead tongue.
Second, Lisp makes it easy to capture relevant generalizations in defining new
objects. In particular, Lisp makes it easy to define new languages especially targeted
to the problem at hand. This is especially handy in
A1 applications, which often
manipulate complex information that is most easily represented in some novel form.
Lisp is one of the few languages that allows full flexibility in defining and manipu
-
lating programs as well as data. All programming languages, by definition, provide
a means of defining programs, but many other languages limit the ways in which a
program can be used, or limit the range of programs that can be defined, or require
the programmer to explicitly state irrelevant details.
Third, Lisp makes it very easy to develop a working program fast. Lisp programs
are concise and are uncluttered by low
-
level detail. Common Lisp offers an unusually
large number of useful predefined objects, including over 700 functions. The pro
-
gramming environment (such as debugging tools, incremental compilers, integrated
editors, and interfaces to window systems) that surround Lisp systems are usually
very good. And the dynamic, interactive nature of Lisp makes it easy to experiment
and change a program while it is being developed.
It must be mentioned that in Europe and Japan,
Prolog has been as popular as
Lisp for
A1 work. Prolog shares most of Lisp's advantages in terms of flexibility and
conciseness. Recently, Lisp has gained popularity worldwide, and
Prolog is becom
-
ing more well known in the United States. As a result, the average A1 worker today is
likely to be bilingual. This book presents the key ideas behind
Prolog in chapters
11
and 12, and uses these ideas in subsequent chapters, particularly 20 and 21.
The dialect of Lisp known as Scheme is also gaining in popularity, but primarily
for teaching and experimenting with programming language design and techniques,
and not so much for writing large
A1 programs. Scheme is presented in chapters 22
and 23. Other dialects of Lisp such as Franz Lisp,
MacLisp, InterLisp, ZetaLisp,
and Standard Lisp are now considered obsolete. The only new dialect of Lisp to be
proposed recently is
EuLisp, the European Lisp. A few dialects of Lisp live on as
embedded extension languages. For example, the Gnu Emacs text editor uses elisp,
and the
AutoCad computer
-
aided design package uses AutoLisp, a derivative of Xlisp.
In the future, it is likely that Scheme will become a popular extension language, since
it is small but powerful and has an officially sanctioned standard definition.
There is a myth that Lisp (and
Prolog) are
"
special
-
purpose
"
languages, while
languages like Pascal and C are
"
general purpose.
"
Actually, just the reverse is
true. Pascal and C are special
-
purpose languages for manipulating the registers and
memory of a von Neumann
-
style computer. The majority of their syntax is devoted
to arithmetic and Boolean expressions, and while they provide some facilities for
forming data structures, they have poor mechanisms for procedural abstraction
or control abstraction. In addition, they are designed for the state
-
oriented style
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