In article <··············@one.net.au>, Neurocrat wrote:
>The thing that impresses me most is how the elegance and (dare I say)
>simplicity of the language extends all the way up and all the way
>down. It seems possible to do so much with so little. By contrast with
>C++ and other languages that have had pieces tacked onto them over the
>years, the whole thing seems so uniformly elegant and intelligent.
You may want to read about the history of LISP. McCarthy's paper on the
subject, presented at the first ACM History of Programming Languages
conference, covers the early history of the language. Gabriel and Steele's
paper, presented at the second ACM History of Programming Languages
conference, starts where McCarthy stopped. See
http://www.elwoodcorp.com/alu/table/history.htm
for both papers and a few other links.
I'm still looking for the exact source of a quotation. It could be one of
the above papers, or it could be another paper. The quotation warns that
although LISP appears uniform, and appears to have been _designed_ to be
uniform, it actually evolved without as much design as one might like.
Of course that makes the uniformity you mentioned all the more remarkable!
But note that there have been many LISP battles; some were settled but some
are not. And LISP dialects, and implementations of the same dialect, differ
in important ways (past/present and present/present). In other words, the
language is still evolving. So don't expect complete consistency.
-- Derek
Derek Peschel wrote:
>
> You may want to read about the history of LISP. McCarthy's paper on the
> subject, presented at the first ACM History of Programming Languages
> conference, covers the early history of the language. Gabriel and Steele's
> paper, presented at the second ACM History of Programming Languages
> conference, starts where McCarthy stopped. See
>
> http://www.elwoodcorp.com/alu/table/history.htm
>
> for both papers and a few other links.
Indeed, it sounds like a history worth exploring. From what little I
have read so far, it sounds as if the old "Lisp Machines" were well
ahead of their time (and still better than anything available today, if
their advocates are to be believed). Pity most of us will never have the
chance to find out.
> I'm still looking for the exact source of a quotation. It could be one of
> the above papers, or it could be another paper. The quotation warns that
> although LISP appears uniform, and appears to have been _designed_ to be
> uniform, it actually evolved without as much design as one might like.
>
> Of course that makes the uniformity you mentioned all the more remarkable!
It looks as seamless as an egg from where I stand. (With my whole two
days of experience ;-)).
Yes. One of the things that surprised me most after reading Winston &
Horn is how well Lisp can express contemporary ideas without changing
its underlying simplicity. It seems the language can be extended to do
just about anything without compromising the main features of its
design. That's something I've never seen anywhere else.
Neurocrat (·········@one.net.au) wrote:
> ...From what little I
> have read so far, it sounds as if the old "Lisp Machines" were well
> ahead of their time (and still better than anything available today, if
> their advocates are to be believed). Pity most of us will never have the
> chance to find out.
I have also read tales that their operating systems had fantastic
innovations that made Unix look quite primitive. Granted, the Lisp
machine hardware is no longer being manufactured, but what prevents
the OS from being reimplemented on plentiful commodity x86 hardware?
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
Will Ware email: wware @ world.std.com
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Will Ware would say:
>Neurocrat (·········@one.net.au) wrote:
>> ...From what little I
>> have read so far, it sounds as if the old "Lisp Machines" were well
>> ahead of their time (and still better than anything available today, if
>> their advocates are to be believed). Pity most of us will never have the
>> chance to find out.
>
>I have also read tales that their operating systems had fantastic
>innovations that made Unix look quite primitive. Granted, the Lisp
>machine hardware is no longer being manufactured, but what prevents
>the OS from being reimplemented on plentiful commodity x86 hardware?
Merely the time and effort required; merely the time and effort...
--
·····@freenet.carleton.ca - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped." -- ········@csi.uottawa.edu
Christopher Browne wrote:
> >I have also read tales that their operating systems had fantastic
> >innovations that made Unix look quite primitive. Granted, the Lisp
> >machine hardware is no longer being manufactured, but what prevents
> >the OS from being reimplemented on plentiful commodity x86 hardware?
>
> Merely the time and effort required; merely the time and effort...
I am not personally familiar with it, but I understand that
Open Genera runs on Dec [Compaq] Alpha platforms.
See www.symbolics.com
> I have also read tales that their operating systems had fantastic
> innovations that made Unix look quite primitive. Granted, the Lisp
> machine hardware is no longer being manufactured, but what prevents
> the OS from being reimplemented on plentiful commodity x86 hardware?
This remembers me some old souvenirs.....
At least, they were a lot easier to administer than a Unix workstation.
A few hours of training were enough for most administration duties.
The OS was built for the hardware and reciprocally. For example, it
used a tagged architecture (inspired from the PDP-10), microcode that
was loadable and so on. it's not an easy task to port a such system on
a fundamentally different architecture. Well, the Lisp machines were
created for that same reason after all.
Genera has been ported twice: once on ivory boards for MacIntoshes and
on the DEC Alphas. Unhappily both platforms are not as commercially
successful (undependently of Symbolics) as expected. Symbolics has a
web site, but it looks more as a "legacy" site, maintaining what's
existing. I fear that there is not enough money nor enough people for
a port to Intel Platforms (either under Win32 or under Linux).
Marie-No�lle Baechler
Lausanne
Switzerland
Derek Peschel wrote:
>
> You may want to read about the history of LISP. McCarthy's paper on the
> subject, presented at the first ACM History of Programming Languages
> conference, covers the early history of the language. Gabriel and Steele's
> paper, presented at the second ACM History of Programming Languages
> conference, starts where McCarthy stopped. See
>
> http://www.elwoodcorp.com/alu/table/history.htm
>
> for both papers and a few other links.
Indeed, it sounds like a history worth exploring. From what little I
have read so far, it sounds as if the old "Lisp Machines" were well
ahead of their time (and still better than anything available today, if
their advocates are to be believed). Pity most of us will never have the
chance to find out.
> I'm still looking for the exact source of a quotation. It could be one of
> the above papers, or it could be another paper. The quotation warns that
> although LISP appears uniform, and appears to have been _designed_ to be
> uniform, it actually evolved without as much design as one might like.
>
> Of course that makes the uniformity you mentioned all the more remarkable!
It looks as seamless as an egg from where I stand. (With my whole two
days of experience ;-)).
Yes. One of the things that surprised me most after reading Winston &
Horn is how well Lisp can express contemporary ideas without changing
its underlying simplicity. It seems the language can be extended to do
just about anything without compromising the main features of its
design. That's something I've never seen anywhere else.