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From: hen@bu-cs.UUCP (Bill Henneman)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.lang.lisp,net.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Speed with numbers: PDP-10 Maclisp vs. Fortran (details)
Message-ID: <242@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Mar-85 19:27:14 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.242
Posted: Thu Mar 14 19:27:14 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 04:42:53 EST
References: <470@harvard.ARPA>, <308@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Xref: watmath net.ai:2625 net.lang.lisp:390 net.lang.ada:231
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Well, yes, FORTRAN is a more logical choice than LISP for crunching
numbers if thats *all* you're doing.  But suppose your application
involves 80% stuff where LISP routines are your best choice, but 20%
number crunching (an intelligent robot, for example, where the scene
analysis part would be a nightmare in FORTRAN, but the joint control
and the bit maps corresponding to the visual scene have heavy numerical
calculation).  I am not too proud to write an occasional SETQ, and I
might even stoop to writing a nested DO, if in return a get pattern
matching, and all those other goodies.