When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
I first did lisp seriously when I had to port an implementation of Franz Lisp to the Perq workstation running PNX in 1982. I spent 3 weeks getting it to work.
What led you to try Lisp?
Testing the lisp port on the Perq got me involved, then addicted. I rewrote a satellite channel bandwidth allocation system in a matter of days, with a quantum leap in performance and flexibility over the original Pascal code.
What other languages have you been using most?
C, Ada, Smalltalk, Java, Python.
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
Overall, I've now been using it for 28 years and still going strong - both Common Lisp and Scheme. My preferred use is to develop domain-specific languages for problem solving in various fields. I still have another 30 years to go at least before I can claim to know Lisp...
What do you think of Lisp so far?
It's a brilliant language paradigm for solving problems, and if there were no other computer languages around I wouldn't actually notice too much.
Switch Date 1980s