Re: Haskell: functional languages vs Lisp

From: mikel (mikel_at_evins.net)
Date: 05/29/04 

Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 08:58:36 GMT

Rainer Joswig wrote:

> In article <IQNtc.5275$_y7.3890@newssvr27.news.prodigy.com>,
> mikel <mikel@evins.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Nelson Marcelino wrote:
>>
>>>I am curious to know what advantages does Lisp have over Haskell.
>>
>>It's been around a long time and its features reflect a lot of what
>>people need and want to do with a programming language. It's especially
>>easy to edit, and easy to make tools to support editing, refactoring,
>>and other code-construction tasks. It supports live updates of running
>>applications better than any other language or runtime except perhaps
>>Smalltalk. Also along with Smalltalk, it provides exceptional support
>>for catching and repairing errors and other deficiencies while an
>>application is running.
>>
>>
>>>I would like to know what people think of newer languages such as Lisp
>>>OCAML SML
>>>and how they compare to Lisp.
>>
>>I like ML generally, and especially Ocaml, a lot. I use it almost as
>>much as I use Lisp. Basically, when I need to do something complicated
>>that must run very fast and is best delivered as a single,
>>self-contained command-line utility, I write it in Ocaml. For
>>interactive things (or long-running processes with interactive monitors)
>>I prefer to use Lisp.
>>
>>It so happens that over the past few months I've conducted a sort of
>>informal experiment, using Common Lisp, Scheme, and Ocaml to write and
>>rewrite the same nontrivial application. The application is a
>>commmand-line code-groveling tools that has to process about 600MB of
>>data on each run and do a bunch of data-extraction and restructuring,
>>and write a report. It's for construction of part of a product that
>>customers pay a lot of money for, so it has to be reliable and good, but
>>I have a lot of freedom to build it any way I like (as long as it keeps
>>doing its job quickly and reliably). Without any particular agenda (I
>>tried all three languages because they're the ones I like most), I have
>>evolved a process that involves prototyping new features in Common Lisp
>>and then delivering them in Ocaml. I find it easier to explore the
>>problem space interactively in Lisp, and easier to deliver a program
>>whose source is concise, and whose executable is small, simple, and fast
>>in Ocaml. It's pretty easy to translate ideas from Lisp to Ocaml.
>
>
> There are a lot of approaches to delivery.
>
> Some people just don't want to rewrite the code in another
> language (which can be tough ;-) ).
>
> a) Delivery system like for example in LispWorks
> b) Lisp->C compiler
> c) Subset languages with delivery in static language.
> Like 'Stella' (http://www.isi.edu/isd/LOOM/Stella/index.html).

Sure. If you had asked me a few months ago if I would deliver anything
this way, I would have said 'of course not'. But it happens to be what
works well for me in my current circumstances. I stumbled upon it,
really. It probably it works well mostly because rewriting these
features in Ocaml *isn't* hard for me. That result can't be generalized
across people or projects, I'm pretty sure.

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