Hi

Sat May 9 10:14:55 UTC 2020

Yow,

Here’re my 2c too:

By the time I got to college I was all about the purity of C and how that supposedly allowed great control over what was going on in the machine.

Then I learned about Scheme and Common Lisp in a few AI courses and eventually got hooked by its conceptual elegance (the sometimes gory... Compromises came later) and above all how much simpler it was to express my thought process using it.

When I left college I was fortunate enough to find my way into a company founded by a couple of Professors in 1986 to work on hard optimization problems (SISCOG). Since they had taken their PhDs on AI in the 70s they picked Lisp and even helped sell Lisp Machines here in Portugal for a few years. Have been programming professionally using Lisp for the past 15 years.

Every now and then there’s talk about moving to a more mainstream language, but we do our best to make using Lisp worthwhile.

For the cause!

Cheers,

TMD.
On 9 May 2020, 09:42 +0000, Geoffrey Teale <tealeg at gmail.com>, wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> Loved your books BTW.  I've been in and out of management since my late twenties.  I'm never quite sure if I should stick or twist.  Either way, pure engineering, or pure management is preferable to the horrible middle ground.  I've been sold titles like Architect and Principal Engineer but it all seems to resolve down to "be a key player in the code, but also deal with all this project management and team management stuff too".   I'm about to start a new role at a new firm, so the dance begins again.
>
> --
> Geoff
>
> > On Sat, 9 May 2020 at 02:11, Peter Seibel <peter at gigamonkeys.com> wrote:
> > > I'm still on the list too and always have a SLIME/SBCL repl open in Emacs just in case but I'm mostly managing now for a team that uses Python.
> > >
> > > > On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 4:48 PM Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.net> wrote:
> > > > > I've been using Common Lisp ... pretty much since it was a thing. So, yes, that must be almost 30 years, starting on a Symbolics.
> > > > > And I've used it professionally pretty much that whole time, with occasional divergences to other languages for the odd project here and there.
> > > > > Mostly AI stuff, a lot of symbolic computing, but other stuff as well.
> > > > > Have a good weekend, all!
> > > > > On 8 May 2020, at 14:36, Burton Samograd wrote:
> > > > > > Thanks for all the great replies. Good to know you all.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I’ve been a Lisper for about 15 years.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > https://github.com/burtonsamograd
> > > > > > https://github.com/BusFactor1Inc
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Burton Samograd
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > On May 8, 2020, at 10:15 AM, dbm at refined-audiometrics.com wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I have been using CL now for about 30 years. Professionally and avocationally, I use it for signal and image processing, cryptography, market trading and risk modeling, machine and instrument control, and just general math modeling.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Now, I guess, I am finally retired… so I support myself with Lisp and market trading. And, avocationally, I use it for music composition, sound processing, and astronomical image processing.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I am an old Astrophysicist who started with Forth and found Lisp as its natural evolution to what Forth always wanted to be…
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > - David McClain
> > > > > > > Tucson, AZ, USA
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Robert P. Goldman
> > > > > Research Fellow
> > > > > Smart Information Flow Technologies (d/b/a SIFT, LLC)
> > > > > 319 N. First Ave., Suite 400
> > > > > Minneapolis, MN 55401
> > > > > Voice: (612) 326-3934
> > > > > Email: rpgoldman at SIFT.net
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Peter Seibel
> > > http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
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