"One should never discuss religion, politics, or programming languages."

Non-critical comparisons between Lisp and other programing languages

• The Future of Lisp in the Febrary/March 1996 issue of IEEE Expert, includes commentary by Howard Shrobe (on Lisp) Guy L. Steele, Jr. (on Java), Bjarne Stroustrup (on C++) and Scott E. Falhlman (on Dylan), each describing the strenghths and weaknesses of these languages for AI work. (This used to be publicly available online, but it seems you now need an IEEE Computer Society digital library subscription.)
• Appendix A of The Art of the Metaobject Protocol introduces CLOS in comparison with Smalltalk and C++.
• Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective has several chapters comparing CLOS with each of Smalltalk, Eiffel, Sather, and C++, including CLOS, Eiffel, and Sather: A Comparison by Schmidt and Omohundro.

In praise of Lisp

• In the introduction to his Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, Peter Norvig discusses some of the reasons why Lisp works so well. This introduction can be viewed online.
• Kent Pitman's Parenthetically Speaking column entitled "Accelerating Hindsight: Lisp as a Vehicle for Rapid Prototyping" is intended for people already familiar with Lisp, and gives some reasons why programmers can be so productive using Lisp.
• The Symbolics Technical Summary is somewhat dated, but discusses features of symbolic computing and the Lisp language.
• Common Lisp: Myths and Legends, from Xanalys's web site.
• Erann Gat wrote an article called Lisp as an Alternative to Java. Here's an excerpt from the paper's introduction:

  In a recent study [from the October 1999 CACM], Prechelt compared the relative performance of Java and C++ in terms of execution time and memory utilization. Unlike many benchmark studies, Prechelt compared multiple implementations of the same task by multiple programmers in order to control for the effects of differences in programmer skill. Prechelt concluded that, "as of JDK 1.2, Java programs are typically much slower than programs written in C or C++. They also consume much more memory."

  We have repeated Prechelt's study using Lisp as the implementation language. Our results show that Lisp's performance is comparable to or better than C++ in terms of execution speed, with significantly lower variability which translates into reduced project risk. Furthermore, development time is significantly lower and less variable than either C++ or Java. Memory consumption is comparable to Java. Lisp thus presents a viable alternative to Java for dynamic applications where performance is important.

Criticisms of Lisp

• Richard Gabriel's "Good News, Bad News: How to Win Big" describes some directions Lisp implementors might wish to take. It is available on-line and via ftp.
• Henry Baker's Critique of DIN Kernel Lisp Definition Version 1.2 explores some details of earlier Common Lisp and ISO/DIN(ISLisp) de facto standards, predating the final ANSI and ISO Lisps, and Dylan.

Criticisms of other languages

"C combines the power of assembler with the portability of assembler." - Anonymous

"The C language is particularly rich with ways of writing a program that totally hide the original design intent." - Stanley Chow

"C++ has not lost touch with C's primary virtues." - Bjarne Stroustrup

• Guidelines For Choosing a Computer Language: Support For the Visionary Organization, Patricia K. Lawlis, March 1996 takes a pro-Ada view of C/C++, Cobol, Fortran, Smalltalk and assembly languages, as well as with 4/5GL systems.
• Comparing Development Costs of C and Ada also takes a pro-Ada view.
• C++? A Critique of C++, by Ian Joyner, makes a pro-Eiffel comparisson C++, C, Java and Eiffel.
• Comparisons of Tcl with Other Systems and The Tcl War discuss issues related to both Lisp and the Tcl "scripting language".

Other

• DoD Language Survey