I, Svein Ove Aas, do solemnly offer these my responses to The Road to Lisp Survey:
When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
Earlier this spring (2004), and Common Lisp. It took a while for things to fit together, but once I got the basics in place - Emacs, ilisp, SBCL and a borrowed copy of PAIP - it didn't take me long to fall in love.
What led you to try Lisp?
One of my CS classes had a few lectures by Prof. Tage, which at times seemed to be poorly concealed Lisp advocacy. I had been meaning to try Lisp a few years before, but was unable to find and put together a reasonable environment; asking him for help in the breaks was enough to get started.
What other languages have you been using most?
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(li>C/C++ because it was easy to get started in them, and I ran into them all over the place; it's been my language of choice up until last autumn.
- Java, since that's the university's language of choice. Being forced to use it led to developing a bit of fear and loathing, but I feel better now. I'm told the alternative was Pascal, so maybe I should be thankful.
- I discovered Python last summer, and had a brief romance with it. I'm still likely to use it for cross-platform GUIs where I can't use Lisp, but its major role has been in showing me that maybe there was something beyond C++.
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
I'm still learning the basics, and often find that there are far more elegant and simpler ways to do things than the ones I use. This is a marvel in itself, since that same inelegant code is still far simpler than the equivalent Java/C++ code.
What do you think of Lisp so far?
I think it's the language God would have used to implement the Universe. I think it was a horrible loss when the Fortran family was chosen over the Lisp family, and I think it's going to play a major role in the future.
Either Lisp will become the language of choice, or some other language will become Lisp.
Please delete all but one of these cross-referencing tags: Switch Date 2004
RtL Language Curiosity | RtL Formal Education
