Ken Tilton  <kentilton@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| As Lispniks, the best chance we have to use Lisp "at work"
| is to develop  and sell our own software.
+---------------

Actually, I have found almost the exact opposite in my own case!
I "get to use Lisp at work" by.... *using* it!  ;-}  That is, by
writing all of the miscellaneous one-off exploratory code in it,
the various "shell scripts" that inevitably arise during a project,
the bits that never ship to a customer but would have taken up a
*lot* of my time had I tried to hack them out in C (say).

Oh, and the various user-mode hardware debugging tools that I seem
to write in Lisp [first Scheme, and now CL] wherever I go. [Peek,
poke, twiddle registers, flash new firmware, etc.] My employers
don't really care what software the hardware hackers [e.g., me]
use, as long as the bugs are found & fixed and the product ships!

+---------------
| > The only software that will be in any real danger by Free Software
| > is commodity stuff.
| 
| Maybe. But I see CLisp and all the branches from CMUCL and GCL as
| a drag on commercial Lisp sales (not commodities at all) and falling
| into the same general category that started this thread: people hurting
| their own productivity at great cost to themselves and society by
| using crappy free tools.
+---------------

Again, in my case I could have *NEVER* used either Scheme or
Common Lisp at work if my bosses had had to pay *anything* for
them [or even acknowledge their existence at all officially].
So since work was where I started using them, I probabaly never
would have started at all. Wow, *that* would have been a bummer...
To me, at least.


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607