[ACM Press the third international conference - Cambridge, Massachusetts (1993.08.09-1993.08.13)] Proceedings of the third international conference on Lisp users and vendors - LUV '93 - Knocking down the corporate barriers to Lisp
✍ Scribed by Zoeller, Randal V.; Galarneau, Jeff
- Book ID
- 111643003
- Publisher
- ACM Press
- Year
- 1993
- Weight
- 341 KB
- Volume
- 0
- Category
- Article
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
It is a well-known fact that the software development industry has not embraced Lisp as a mainstream language. Despite the flexibility, power, and heritage of the language, the fact still remains---Lisp is a niche development language. While there remain staunch proponents of Lisp, their recommendations, proposals, and productivity gains are often overlooked. In many cases, the programming language used to develop an application is mandated by management, often for reasons that appear to make sense (e.g., availability of tools, portability of the application, and acceptability by the customer). How then do Lisp advocates gain acceptance against the groundswell generated by mainstream languages such as C and C++? Knocking down the barriers to Lisp involves not only co-existing with the mainstream languages but also complementing them. This paper describes business issues that must be addressed to enable Lisp to become accepted in the computer industry and in Corporate America as a whole. Additionally, it explains what it means to "complement" mainstream languages and describes some mechanisms used to accomplish this task.