When did you first try Lisp seriously?
I was taught it at Uni, approximately 1990.
My first paying job was to reverse engineer a Lisp "Knowledge Source-based Expert System, using a blackboard model".
Which Lisp did you try?
Not sure what we used at Uni, but I used a Symbolics MacIvory card in a colour Mac II in my first job.
I have never used Lisp on a Unix system.
What led you to try Lisp?
See above.
If you were trying Lisp out of unhappiness with another language, what was it and what did you not like about it, or what about Lisp were you hoping to find different?
After I got into this Lisp job I found I was able to say Lisp as my favourite non-procedural language.
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp? (I know, that is hard to measure)
Because I haven't needed it since my first job (1991-2), I have definitely forgotten more than I remember.
What do you think of Lisp so far?
I've been able to play with a Lisp again using Rich Hickey's DotLisp as an immediate mode interface into Microsoft's .NET Framework.
I see Lisp as about the same as C in procedural languages: both allow you to extend and create high-level concepts, but also tinker with low-level implementation details. Clearly, it is far easier in Lisp to do the former and C (and most procedural languages) often force you to consider the latter when you'd prefer not to.
Switch Date 1990s RtL Formal Education RtL Work
My homepage: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~markhurd/.
Make your own opinion of me from my newsgroup posts: Search Google.
Some important Lisp links that should be mentioned somewhere:
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John McCarthy's Home Page -- The inventor of Lisp and futurist.
Specific Lisp papers on that site: