On Sat, 19 May 2007, C Y wrote: | > I however have fundamental objections to any move to burry Axiom | > deeper into a second class build system, and second class galaxy. | | I may be alone in this, but I don't view Lisp as "second class." It is | a language with a long usage history, particularly in the domain of | problem we happen to be working on. Someone on the list described it | as "assembly code" - that's actually not a bad thing in some | situations, and for others (like SPAD for mathematics) Lisp is | excellent for implementing languages to meet specific problem domains | (I believe Paradigms of AI Programming, one of the major lisp | references, illustrates that.)
I think I can claim the assembly language characterization and I stand by it. For lot of people, it has become a marginal language. Colleagues I have high estimes for recently asked me "why are you buring your time and work in an antique language no light came from for over half a century?". I don't think they are ignorant; on the contrary, they have unmatched understanding of programming languages, academic and industrial needs and issues, educations. Think about it: Lisp and derivatives have "own" academic institutions for over half a century, yet... [...] | > Please give a thought to why we don't seem to attract new blood to | > Axiom. It is not that it is that difficult. I've seen new blood in | > the more challenging and difficult GCC system. | | GCC is very general purpose (and widely depended upon), and equally | important perhaps it is very widely known. Without GCC free software | as we know it wouldn't exist. That attracts attention. I don't believe that suffices to explain it. [...] | Shaking our reputation as "the hard CAS" would probably do the most | good as far as attracting people, but I'm not sure how practical that | is. Currently, I would think we are closer to the guys who constantly rewrite the old stuff without making progress; that hardly attracts new blood, research funds. -- Gaby _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
