Re: the necessity of Lisp's Objects?

> From: "John Thingstad" <jpth...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Mathematica does have recursion.
> The problem comes when you try to compile the code.
> But compiling code in Mathematica is unusual.

Somebody said if the code isn't compiled, it runs a thousand times
slower. For any major program component, it would seem essential to
compile it to give anywhere near decent speed. How would we feel
about Lisp if the compiler didn't work on anything recusrive, for
example READ had to always be run interpreted? Would Lispers
tolerate that??

> Compile is primarily meant to speed up numerical calculations.

So if you define a function that performs some sort of butterfly to
efficiently perform arithmetic such as modular exponentiation on
very large integers, and of course it's recursive, you lose???

Does Mathematica provide sup****t for (unix) inter-process streams
(pipes), so that you could have a Lisp sitting alongside it to
perform calcuations that required recursion?