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Lisp Re-Rulz

Mark Dionne points out (via Ray Kurzweil) that Crash Bandicoot, one of the most popular Playstation games, was written in Lisp. Why would a modern game be written in a dead language? Because it ain’t dead. The power of Lisp isn’t in its conspicuous use of lists and parentheses. As Andy Gavin, the co-founder of the gaming company, explains:

With lisp one can rapidly develop meta constructs for behaviors and combine them in new ways. In addition, lisp allows the redefinition of the language to easily add new constructs, particularly those needed to deal with time-based behaviors and the layering of actions. Contrary to popular belief there is nothing inherently slow about lisp. It is easy to constuct a simple dialect which is just as efficient as C, but retains the dynamic and consistant qualities that make lisp a much more effective expression of one’s programming intentions.

Paul Graham has argued in favor of Lisp in a more systematic way (as I blogged in February), raising the question of what constitutes a “higher level” language. (Here is a keynote Paul gave.)

So, do I program in Lisp? Nah. It’s such a pain in the ass for someone like me who writes mainly little utilities for himself like a tiny text processor that automates the production of HTML tuned specifically to the needs of this blog. (Well, actually — he says with a little pride — it also stores the blog entries in a text base, lets me browse through them, and automatically assembles and formats selected blog entries for inclusion in my newsletter, JOHO.) So, what’s the choice of a non-manly hobbyist programmer like me? Um, Visual Basic.

And now you write to me to tell me to switch to Squeak and I tell you that I’m good enough at VB that the switching costs are too high and then you lose all respect for me, so then I spend two years in a Zen monastery eating wheatberries and mastering C++ and come out and marry Uma Thurman. Thanks! That’s just the nudge I needed!

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One Response to “Lisp Re-Rulz”

  1. I think how lisp started was they said a word that ended in th. For example, South. They keep using/repeating the word then the th sound comes out of their mouth even if they can’t help it.

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