Why Common Lisp (why not C, C++, Java, or some other
buzzword language)?
Because working with EXPRESS,
EXPRESS-X, and STEP data is a fairly complex task and Lisp allows
us to concentrate on the task at hand without having to worry
about declaring variable types and managing memory. Lisp is also
more portable. EE has very little #+Win32 and #+Unix code (the
lisp equivalent of C's #ifdef).
Why is Express Engine's GUI written in CAPI instead of
CLIM?
The original author of EE (then Expresso) was not
familiar enough with CLIM to use it on such a large project.
Eventually, we will reimplement the GUI in CLIM. If you're
interested in helping with that part of the project, by all means,
send a message to the Developers List
and we'll see what we can do to get you started.
We have successfully compiled the non-GUI version of EE with SBCL. One of our plans is to shift development from LispWorks+CAPI to SBCL+CLIM (McCLIM).
For more information about Lisp and its dialects follow these links:
Lisp Development Environments