Re: [Axiom-developer] Re: learning Lisp

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I'll second this nomination ... I have the hard-copy version. Of course 
I know more about Lisp than I do about Axiom at the moment :) If you're 
on a Linux system, there are four reasonable Lisp implementations to 
choose from, all different but converging towards ANSI compatibility.

GCL has some compile-time flags that bring it closer to ANSI 
compatibility, and it has "readline" support built in. My recollection 
is that it benchmarks faster than the other three on the "toy Lisp 
program" benchmarks, but I don't know how it compares on real 
applications like Axiom.

The other three are Clisp, CMUCL and SBCL. Clisp also has "readline" 
built in. It's probably also the best choice if you want to be able to 
work with both Linux and Windows. It is in CygWin, and there may be a 
native Windows version as well.

CMUCL is Carnegie Mellon University Common Lisp. It doesn't have 
"readline" and doesn't do Windows, but it's faster than GCL on some 
benchmarks and is the only open source Lisp that reliably handles some 
of the music software from CCRMA. There's an open source wrapper that 
provides "readline" support if you need it.

SBCL is "Steel Bank Common Lisp". "Steel Bank" is a play on the words 
"Carnegie Mellon"; Carnegie was a steel magnate and Mellon was a banker. 
:) It's a more or less complete re-write of CMUCL and is the youngest of 
the bunch. The current release I have is 0.9.7, and I think it runs on 
Windows, or at least will at some point in the not too distant future.

Jens Axel Søgaard wrote:

> William Sit wrote:
>
> > If not under Axiom, what is your recommendation for an environment to 
> > learn
> > lisp?
>
>
> Perhaps "Practical Common Lisp" has an answer.
>
>     <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>
>
> If not, i'm sure comp.lang.lisp will be helpful.

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com