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I'm intrigued. This looks like an update to xlisp-stat that interfaces with some newer CL libraries. There is a nice paper about why UCLA switched from Lisp to

I'm intrigued. This looks like an update to xlisp-stat that interfaces with some newer CL libraries. There is a nice paper about why UCLA switched from Lisp to R in the 90s. https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v013i07 https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v013i07

vindarel 6y ago
I'm intrigued too, thanks for the paper. > on a somewhat larger scale, the Lisp user community was not growing much either, and much of what was done in Lisp was now done in newer (an leaner) interpreted languages such as Perl, Python,or Ruby. All in all, the developments did not seem to indicate a healthy state of affairs. Good news is, Lisp is reawakening and developers shy away from Python :) > S was rapidly becoming the lingua franca of statistics. > We were not teaching a marketable skill. Surprisingly, there are no more reasons. The rest of the paper is dedicated to his love to Lisp and his regrets: > I very much liked the idea of taking a general purpose programming language, such as Lisp, and adding the statistics on top as a library or a set of plug-ins. There are now various more or less satisfactory attempts to put S/R on top of Java, Perl, and Python but they have the major disadvantage that they involve mapping two competing systems. > putting the scientific software on top of a general purpose programming language (in the same way as we used to put subroutine libraries such as IMSL on top of FORTRAN and C) is still a good idea, maybe even a better idea than developing special-purpose little languages. > It is also important not only to standardize on a language, but even on a GUI and a runtime system. That is why it is unfortunate that we still have two major and incompatible imple- mentations of the S language, S-PLUS and R. etc etc > The main difference between Lisp-Stat and S/R is that between a set of commands added to a large and popular general purpose programming language and a special-purpose little language for statistical computing. My personal opinion is that it is unfortunate that the statistical community made the choice that it made, because more was given up than was actually gained. [at his time of writing. And now?]

vindarel 6y ago

I'm intrigued too, thanks for the paper. > on a somewhat larger scale, the Lisp user community was not growing much either, and much of what was done in Lisp was now done in newer (an leaner) interpreted languages such as Perl, Python,or Ruby. All in all, the developments did not seem to indicate a healthy state of affairs. Good news is, Lisp is reawakening and developers shy away from Python :) > S was rapidly becoming the lingua franca of statistics. > We were not teaching a marketable skill. Surprisingly, there are no more reasons. The rest of the paper is dedicated to his love to Lisp and his regrets: > I very much liked the idea of taking a general purpose programming language, such as Lisp, and adding the statistics on top as a library or a set of plug-ins. There are now various more or less satisfactory attempts to put S/R on top of Java, Perl, and Python but they have the major disadvantage that they involve mapping two competing systems. > putting the scientific software on top of a general purpose programming language (in the same way as we used to put subroutine libraries such as IMSL on top of FORTRAN and C) is still a good idea, maybe even a better idea than developing special-purpose little languages. > It is also important not only to standardize on a language, but even on a GUI and a runtime system. That is why it is unfortunate that we still have two major and incompatible imple- mentations of the S language, S-PLUS and R. etc etc > The main difference between Lisp-Stat and S/R is that between a set of commands added to a large and popular general purpose programming language and a special-purpose little language for statistical computing. My personal opinion is that it is unfortunate that the statistical community made the choice that it made, because more was given up than was actually gained. [at his time of writing. And now?]