be an elegant mathematical solution to a number of computational problems.
The origins of it's design came first from a desire to work with artificial
intellingence, and as a result to create a language to allow the processing
of imperative and declarative sentences so that the computer could deduce
what the programmer wanted it to do.
While John McCarthy was designing the language, he used mathematical
notation to describe what it should do and how it should work. Steve Russell
happened to notice that the eval function could act as an interpereter for
the language itself, wrote the code for it, and the language ended up with
it's odd parentheses loaded syntax.
It is completely different to any other language I have worked with and I'm
sure I don't understand even a tiny fraction of the implications of the way
it works, but I find that using it from time to time gives me a much better
perspective from which to approach difficult problems in other languages.
It is generally regarded as the first language to support if/else constructs
and several other ideas (http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html). It is also
approaching it's 50th birthday and is still widely regarded as one of the
most if not the most powerful programming languages around.
Definitely worth having in your programming toolbox if for nothing other
than to give you an alternative way to look at problems.
My 2 cents
Spike
--------------------------------------------
Stephen Milligan
Code poet for hire
http://www.spike.org.uk
Do you cfeclipse? http://cfeclipse.tigris.org
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chuck Mason
>Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 5:57 AM
>To: CF-Talk
>Subject: Hackers and Painters - Applied to Cold Fusion
>
>Was undecided about posting this here versus CF-Jobs-Talk but since it
>involves a technical question versus being job-related,
>decided to post
>to CF-Talk.
>
>I've recently read the book "Hackers and Painters" (by Paul
>Graham) and
>it was a very exciting book to read for those of us involved in
>programming who one day dream of building the "next best" software
>product. As Paul Graham speaks of superior programming languages and
>targets LISP as being "the one", this book got me thinking about CF.
>I've been a CF / Visual Basic guy for the past 6-8 years and know
>nothing of LISP and/or whether it would be reasonable to study it in
>terms of designing a Web software product (Viaweb, which sold to Yahoo
>as their shopping card builder, was programmed in LISP). So to the
>bottom line ... for those of you Web software developers planning on
>designing the next best application - one which outperforms all others
>in it's class (shopping cart builder, lead gen app, etc.), - is Cold
>Fusion truly the language to focus on? Other contenders are of course
>Asp.net, PHP, Python, Perl, (and Lisp?). I have found
>programming Cold
>Fusion to provide rapid application development over the years
>but have
>recently been directed into the "dark side" (Asp.net) and ... using
>VisualStudio.net to program Asp.net apps is quite nice impressive,
>though I miss programming in Cold Fusion.
>
>
>Chuck
>
>
>
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