I know that this is subjective and all, but still, can you guys (and gals) provide some list of serious applications that were written in Lisp (perhaps along with what Lisp it is)?
I knew that, and you are right, it is bloody impressive piece of software.
Bartosz Radaczyński
2009-02-12 23:05:27
Well, not just parts, but the whole emacs. The only C things are the parts of the elisp runtime itself.
Dev er dev
2009-02-13 11:09:49
From one point of view, emacs is simply a Lisp interpreter optimized for text processing, and including a lot of sample Lisp code.
David Thornley
2009-10-13 20:41:03
+7
A:
I'm particularly fond of Maxima. Another nice project I've discovered relatively recently is Nyquist.
Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu
2009-02-12 22:04:30
+5
A:
Sawfish was GNOME's default window manager long time ago. Now they default to Metacity, but you may still use Sawfish (also standalone) and it is still actively developed.
Sawfish is very feature-rich and customizable. Just what you would expect from a LISP window manager.
ypnos
2009-02-12 22:09:41
+21
A:
ITA Software's airline-fare search service. See here to understand why this is impressive.
rz
2009-02-12 22:10:52
From skimming the first ~10 pages or so, that presentation is amazingly informative. Whoa. Thanks!
unwind
2009-02-13 08:23:17
Here's a technical writeup of that system: http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html
Toybuilder
2009-02-13 09:03:50
this only proves that the search capability of the site is not really that great... It did not come up when I typed the question :(
Bartosz Radaczyński
2009-02-13 08:07:13
+2
A:
Obidos, The Original Amazon Web Server
This according to Steve Yegge.
Mark Harrison
2009-02-13 08:21:14
He doesn't say Obidos was written in Lisp. He says brilliant, Emacs-using, C-and-Lisp-loving engineers wrote it. I can find no other references to Obidos and Lisp anywhere on the web, so I suspect it was written in C.
Ken
2009-02-14 00:24:37
+1
A:
What eventually became Yahoo! shopping was done with Lisp. See the original author's description
Toybuilder
2009-02-13 08:31:11
+1
A:
It's hard to say which Lisp software is exactly most impressive, but I would add Symbolics Genera and related software to the list of achievements worth mentioning. Also don't forget SLIME.
fionbio
2009-02-14 00:01:38
+6
A:
DART. A logistics app written in Common Lisp for the first gulf war, to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. One could say that the war started when this app was ready. The developers worked under intense time pressure to make it possible.
This single application is said to have paid back for all (!) US government investment in AI research.
foo
2009-02-14 00:50:55
+1
A:
Whitehouse Publication Server
During the Clinton administration a Lisp application was used to inform the US citizens about government news. The application was written in Common Lisp and ran on top of the CL-HTTP web server on two Symbolics Lisp Machines (later on the Open Genera virtual Lisp Machine). It also used the Statice object-oriented database. The application provided a taxonomy of government areas which could be queried with a web or an email interface for publications. For example citizens could find out what the vice president Al Gore said about environmental issues in a certain week. This was application was shut down by George W. Bush when he came into office.
foo
2009-02-18 23:30:01
+1
A:
Lisp Machines were used by NASA to check Space Shuttle starts. From a Symbolics press release from 1990:
"Recently the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) used Symbolics' high-definition technology to analyze HDTV video images of the Discovery launch in real-time. This high-definition system enabled NASA engineers to get an instant replay of critical launch systems. The engineers were able to enhance and enlarge high-resolution images of the lift-off in order to analyze the condition of and spot potential problems with space shuttle tiles."
They used a bunch of Lisp Machines with special image processing boards.
foo
2009-02-18 23:43:16
+4
A:
One of the most impressive Lisp applications is surely Cyc. Cyc is a project started by Doug Lenat that tries to put common-sense knowledge into a knowledge-based system. Not just a bit, but really really lots of knowledge. Humans have learned a lot of widely different things and it was seen a limitation to artificial intelligence software to not know anything of that. What is the typical color of honey? Do we sit on a chair or under a chair? A cup of fresh coffee is hot. When it rains outside, it does not rain inside. Sea water contains salt, but water in a pond does not. Most birds can fly. Some birds can't fly. It is surprising how many of these facts, rules and concepts people know.
Cyc is under continuous development since 1984 and the knowledge base contains (numbers are from 2004) more than 2.5 million facts and rules. It also contains more than 150 thousand concepts (similar to classes in OOP). Cyc is developed in SubL (a dialect of Common Lisp).
Knowledge is entered in CycL (a declarative logic based language). Specially trained people are entering knowledge. Cyc checks that this new knowledge is not in conflict with existing knowledge. It can also derive new conclusions and one can query it. For its answers it can also generate explanations. Cyc has also many domain-specific heuristics implemented.
In the early days the project started developing on Lisp Machines, but today the software is portable and is also available to interested students and researches (OpenCyc and ResearchCyc).
Rainer Joswig
2009-02-22 11:40:04
I had high hopes on Cyc. I guess I was hoping that connecting an AI to an ontology of everything would bring about the Singularity.
Carl Smotricz
2010-01-12 21:06:06
+2
A:
Another application I really like is PWGL.
PWGL is a visual programming language for computer aided composition and sound synthesis. It is a LispWorks application, which is available for Windows and Mac OS X (free download). It uses a lot of sophisticated graphics (done in OpenGL) for example in its advanced note editor. It can process and create sounds. It also can use Midi input and output. It comes with a really large amount of examples in its tutorial. If you have LispWorks, you can also load the binaries and write your own code using it.
The capabilities of the application are really amazing and if you are willing to learn its usage, it is hours of fun for the hobby composer and hobby sound designer.
Rainer Joswig
2009-02-25 14:58:33