Subject: Re: Can I use Lisp? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/10/24 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3181391107929417@naggum.net> * glauber <theglauber@my-deja.com> | In my (limited) experience, CLISP is often fast enough. In the PC, well | optimized code often runs as fast compiled in CLISP as it does in Corman Lisp | (a machine-language compiler). Corman beats CLISP easily on sloppy code, | though... CLISP is often good enough as long as you do not write any functions of your own that implement any abstractions that require multiple calls to user-land functions. CLISP's performance dichotomy between its C-implemented compiled runtime functions and your byte-compiled Lisp functions leads programmers to optimize at a low abstraction level because they are penalized for their abstractions. This is not a good thing for a Lisp environment, where we want to encourage function calls and make abstractions as inexpensive as possible. We don't want people _not_ to use Common Lisp because of performance issues or to think that only built-ins are fast because they are written in C. Approach CLISP as a good toy implementation of Common Lisp, and move on to a real compiler if you ever plan to investigate performance issues. #:Erik -- I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to death your right to say it. -- Tom Stoppard