Subject: Re: object oriented LISP?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: 27 Oct 2000 03:25:25 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3181605925286820@naggum.net>

* "Esteban" <hook@catfish.net>
| Please forgive another ignorant question about the nature and
| character of LISP:

  Ignorance has only one cure: Asking questions.  Keep it up.

| How might one rank LISP when viewing it in terms of the "high level"
| vs. "low level" continuum paradigm?

  All over the range.  Lisp as such has no limit downwards -- you can
  refer to any kind of object you want.  Since you can expand the
  language any way you want, including optimizing the syntax for a
  special language, there is no limit upwards, either.

| Like unto the previous question:
| 
| Does LISP have pointers, memory allocation, the like?

  Yes, Lisp has pointers.  No, you never see them, and you can't do
  arithmetic on them, and you never dereference them.  That is, any
  object you deal with is actually a pointer to the object.  The only
  exceptions here are characters and small integers.  (If you really
  want to, you can use functions that come with most implementations
  that allow you to reference memory directly through an integer or
  special raw-machine-address thing.)

  Yes, Lisp has memory allocation, but just like the pointers you
  don't see, you don't ever see the memory allocation.  In Lisp, we
  allocate objects, not memory.  That is, there is no such thing as
  raw, uninitialized memory to which you only have a machine address.

  Yes, Lisp has the like, too.

| Thanks again for your patience and generosity with my curiosity about LISP.

  No problem, but if you spell it "Lisp", you will also have entered
  the 1990's.  Small caps went out of vogue in the publishing world
  sometime between 1988 and 1992 as far as I can tell, so now it is no
  longer customary to write UNIX, FORTRAN, LISP, COBOL, etc, in small
  caps like they were in their original literature, but Unix, Fortran,
  Lisp, and COBOL (some things just don't improve :).

| (Pointers to good books (especially beginning treatises) on LISP
| programming, references, tutorials, web sites, etc. would be very
| greatly appreciated.  I'd like to start my relationship with LISP
| off on the proverbial right foot.)

  Take a look at www.lisp.org (= www.alu.org).

| Is there an FAQ for this newsgroup?

  Yes.

#:Erik
-- 
  Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One?
				   -- George W. Bush