[cl-faq] whence "Lisp is slow" myth? one possible answer

[Larry Clapp]

Reading PAIP.  Got to the section on the General Problem Solver
("GPS") and the blocks world.  Haven't read it in detail yet, so I may
have the wrong impression, but the exact problem doesn't matter, so
here goes:

I get the impression that to solve a problem, Norvig runs the GPS
against all permutations of its goals, so as to make sure that the GPS
doesn't fail to find an answer due to the order if its goals.

As I said, I may have the *wrong* impression, but it doesn't matter,
because that was just the springboard to this conjecture: one of the
origins of the "Lisp is slow" myth may've come from AI, which usually
tries to solve very hard problems, some of them NP-complete and/or
require searching large problem spaces, and so regardless of the
language in use the algorithm will take a long time.

Thus:

Lisp is used a lot in AI
AI must solve difficult problems
Solving difficult problems takes a long time
ergo Lisp programs take a long time
ergo Lisp is slow

Any thoughts?  Is this even a new take on the question?

-- Larry