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From: rap@oliven.UUCP (Robert A. Pease)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.lang.lisp,net.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Thus spake the DoD...
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Date: Tue, 5-Mar-85 16:07:33 EST
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Posted: Tue Mar  5 16:07:33 1985
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.

>                   But seriously, folks, I have yet to see a profitable Ada
>program, and so has the DoD.  I'd also like to see anything but a toy system
>written in an implementation of Pascal according to the original report that
>defines same.  Every Pascal implementation, from UCSD Pascal on a 6502 to
>Pascal on IBM or even Pascal on Unix, has had to deal with implementation
>choices and "features" that the authors of Pascal either chose to avoid or
>did not forsee.  [Ted Jardine]

Okay, I wouldn't be supprised if the DoD doesn't have a "profitable Ada
program", it takes so long to come up to speed on the language.  But, you
are asking that Pascal do something it wasn't designed to do; i.e. - work
in the real world.  The language *was* designed as a teaching tool and
people in the real world took a look at it and said, "Hey, this is great!"
Now, the extensions added to Pascal are designed to take it from the
teaching environment and put it in the real world.  No wonder they aren't
standard.

>                                                                    What one
>needs to look at is the style of problem solving.  Fortran constrains; PL/I
>constrains a little bit less; Ada constrains in different ways and with
>unforeseen baggage; Lisp really requires that one change his/her point of
>view in problem solving, and once you have done that you have whole new
>worlds opened up.  We may build on Lisp; we may even suffer under various
>dialects of Lisp for some time to come; but we will not find a better
>fundamental approach to problem solving than Lisp embodies for many lifetimes
>to come.  [Ted Jardine]

Okay, this is the first time anyone has said anything that has sparked my
interest in looking at Lisp.  So tell me, where can I find a good book to
teach me Lisp and what is it called?
-- 

					Robert A. Pease
    {hplabs|zehntel|fortune|ios|tolerant|allegra|tymix}!oliveb!oliven!rap