Talk:Portable Standard Lisp

"was"?

I'm going to change all "was" to "is" right now. I'm using PSL, both in my personal software development, and for other purposes here and there. Our department now and then buy updated versions of stand-alone PSL (from ZIB = "Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin"). More importantly: The most common implementation of Reduce is also provided by ZIB and programmed in PSL (even if I believe there is a CSL implementation around, somewhere); and Reduce is not just a veteran among the CASes, but actually is used, and has new packages added now and then. Of course, Reduce programmers often employ the underlying Standard lisp by means of the RLisp (a.k.a. "symbolic mode") interface; but not entirely so; and anyhow, the developers at ZIB of course do continue to programme in PSL.

As to its ungainlyness, I personally disagree, since I do prefer the Standard Lisp variants; but the main reason I prefer PSL is its comparatively small size and high speed performance. However, I've mainly compared it with Common lisp, which might be unfair; as a "committe language" Common has both the advantage and disadvantage of having a very large number of additional functionality. In any case, my personal preferences are not that important (and besides, some of my colleagues who have tested both are of a very different opinion); but I'll anyhow try to modify the criticism from the present absolute statements to expressions of opinions.

Personally, I think that the largest trouble with the whole Standard lisp family is, that there seems to be no free version of it. Of course, this may be argued both ways: Possibly there are several free Common lisps around, mainly since many more people liked that dialect.JoergenB (talk) 17:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)