[ILUG] LISP & Prologue

[Albert White (Sysadmin)]

> > Also, how are they in terms of easyness and comparibility with respect to C?

C and LISP are two completely different ways of approaching a problem. I didnt f
ind Lisp to hard to learn once I got the idea of lists and everything being a fu
nction into my head.
e.g. here is code to get the factorial of a number:
in lisp:
(defun fact (n)
        (if (= n 1)
        1
        (* (fact (- n 1)) n)))
in C:
int factorial(int n){
int result=1;
while (n > 0) {
        result=result*n;
        n--;
        }
}

There are some similarities between the two, but after learning lisp you will fi
nd that your C programs contain lots of functions calling other functions callin
g functions for several months!
Ive never used Lisp in Linux, when I had to use it I used Allegro in windows - http://www.franz.com/ though looking at that website there is a Linux and BSD trial edition...

dunno anything about prolog..

> But of course :-) If you learn Lisp, your head won't hurt as much and
> you'll be all setup for customising Emacs and sawmill. The choice seems
> clear to me :-)
If you learn lisp you will be able to customise Emacs as a sawmill!
M-x lumberjack :)
(ok Ill shut up and go to bed now..)


al