When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?

CMUCL on Linux/x86 in 2002

Curiosity was the reason. I wanted to figure out if there was some truth to lofty claims of overall superiority that I had heard repeated from many sources so many times in the preceeding ten years.

After the .com bubble burst, I took refugee in a software company in the financial business, and found that they only expected me to work 35 hours a week, which meant that the other 45 work-hours a week was suddenly at my disposal, something I had not experienced in the preceeding .com years ;-) Playing with Lisp soon took up a sizeable chunk of that time.

I spent basically all my sparetime in dec. 2002 and jan 2003 reading through "ANSI Common Lisp", doing the excercises and eksperimenting.

What led you to try Lisp?

I first heard about Lisp when I read "The Jargon File" in book form cover-to-cover in 1992 or 1993.

Later during the 90'ties I followed Philip Greenspuns writings on the web and took notice of his Lisp experiences. I even got as far as downloading and reading his masters thesis about a Lisp CAD/AI system for earthmoving that he created. His 10'th rule keept nagging me while developing e-commerce sites and the like in perl, java etc.

Around the turn of the millenium I got involved with the patterns community and ended up co-chairing the first VikingPLoP in 2002. In this community I met Richard Gabriel, one of the heroes from "The Jargon File" in person. I remember discussing one of the early versions of Paul Grahams paper on viaweb with rpg over dinner at EuroPLoP 2001.

What other languages have you been using most?

Perl and Java.

Document handling systems, server based graphics generation, e-commerce etc. has been the main areas of professional activity for me over the pas ten years.

How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?

I am at present dabbling with a start-up company based around a product idea of mine. The prototype is created in lisp.

What do you think of Lisp so far?

Good/bad. Knowing Lisp makes programming in other languages painfull, so if I am unsuccesfull in pursuing a career in Lisp programming, I will have to cease earning a living from creating software !-)

The language is fantastic. The tools and libraries situation is problematic if you want your creations to be usefull tools for ordinary non-technical human beings as well as to be competetive on sysadm overhead and support costs with software written in other languages.

Particular areas that bugs me: GUI's in general, interfacing with the native user interface of the users machine (look&feel similar to the native GUI, drag&drop + cut&paste ito and from other programs, icons to start the program placed by the installer where the user will expect them to be based on the customs of the platform), install and upgrade - both for individual users, for companies with thousands of desktop pc's and for 24x7 server farms.

Switch Date 2003

RtL Greenspun's Tenth | RtL Paul Graham | RtL Richard Gabriel