From: jurgen_defurne
Subject: History of Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <c2c3c3d1-575c-4c61-b9c6-289197e1455d@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
This weekend and today I read the two parts in the history of Lisp, as
written by Gabriel and Steele, and McCarthy.

I think that somewhere in the FAQ this should be pointed out as
mandatory literature for people who think they have brand new ideas
which ought to be incorporated in Common Lisp, or Scheme, or that
these languages should change.

It seems to me, after reading these histories and following this
newsgroup for more than a year,  that every critical idea about Lisp
in general, and Common Lisp in particular, which is published here,
had already been thought over by the same people who where responsible
for (Common) Lisp's definition and implementation. Thinking about the
regular trolls here, I found it particularly exhilarating that the
addition of an Algol like syntax to Lisp seems to be one of the major
blunders that is repeated over and over by people who do not like S-
expressions, but it never catches on (the first attempt even having
been the M-expressions of McCarthy).

The paper by Gabriel and Steele also makes an analysis of the people
who use Lisp, which gives to me at least a little bit explanation why
there is no real equivalent like CPAN for Lisp. I will not try to
explain it, it is one of those things that you have to experience
yourself, the ease with which you can find, download and install
additional libraries for Perl. There really is no match with Lisp, and
please do not mention asdf. asdf is to Lisp, what dpkg is to Debian,
but apt is to Debian what CPAN is to Perl (yes, weird comparison, but
since Lisp does not have anything like CPAN or apt, it was the only
way I could express it).

Just some thoughts after reading these two enlightening papers.

Good evening,

Jurgen

From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: History of Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-90870F.19242715092008@news-europe.giganews.com>
In article 
<····································@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
 jurgen_defurne <··············@pandora.be> wrote:

> This weekend and today I read the two parts in the history of Lisp, as
> written by Gabriel and Steele, and McCarthy.

There is also some history material written by Herbert Stoyan.
Some stuff is here, but there is also a German book by him:
  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/lisp-enter.html

> 
> I think that somewhere in the FAQ this should be pointed out as
> mandatory literature for people who think they have brand new ideas
> which ought to be incorporated in Common Lisp, or Scheme, or that
> these languages should change.

Well, read through the old mailing lists and newsgroups
for example the Google archive for net.lang.lisp:
http://groups.google.com/group/net.lang.lisp/topics

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/news/0.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/pubs/lists/lisp/slug/

Interesting is especially the transition time to Common Lisp
from 1984 to, say, 1990. Lot's of complaints have been discussed
during that time.

> 
> It seems to me, after reading these histories and following this
> newsgroup for more than a year,  that every critical idea about Lisp
> in general, and Common Lisp in particular, which is published here,
> had already been thought over by the same people who where responsible
> for (Common) Lisp's definition and implementation. Thinking about the
> regular trolls here, I found it particularly exhilarating that the
> addition of an Algol like syntax to Lisp seems to be one of the major
> blunders that is repeated over and over by people who do not like S-
> expressions, but it never catches on (the first attempt even having
> been the M-expressions of McCarthy).
> 
> The paper by Gabriel and Steele also makes an analysis of the people
> who use Lisp, which gives to me at least a little bit explanation why
> there is no real equivalent like CPAN for Lisp. I will not try to
> explain it, it is one of those things that you have to experience
> yourself, the ease with which you can find, download and install
> additional libraries for Perl. There really is no match with Lisp, and
> please do not mention asdf. asdf is to Lisp, what dpkg is to Debian,
> but apt is to Debian what CPAN is to Perl (yes, weird comparison, but
> since Lisp does not have anything like CPAN or apt, it was the only
> way I could express it).
> 
> Just some thoughts after reading these two enlightening papers.
> 
> Good evening,
> 
> Jurgen

-- 
http://lispm.dyndns.org/
From: ······@corporate-world.lisp.de
Subject: Re: History of Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <7fe11df5-3f4e-4a21-b98a-86e4a4fb3dd6@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
On Sep 15, 7:24 pm, Rainer Joswig <······@lisp.de> wrote:
> In article
> <····································@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
>
>  jurgen_defurne <··············@pandora.be> wrote:
> > This weekend and today I read the two parts in the history of Lisp, as
> > written by Gabriel and Steele, and McCarthy.
>
> There is also some history material written by Herbert Stoyan.
> Some stuff is here, but there is also a German book by him:
>  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/html/lisp-enter.html
>
>
>
> > I think that somewhere in the FAQ this should be pointed out as
> > mandatory literature for people who think they have brand new ideas
> > which ought to be incorporated in Common Lisp, or Scheme, or that
> > these languages should change.
>
> Well, read through the old mailing lists and newsgroups
> for example the Google archive for net.lang.lisp:http://groups.google.com/group/net.lang.lisp/topics
>
> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/news/...http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/pubs/lists/lisp...
>
> Interesting is especially the transition time to Common Lisp
> from 1984 to, say, 1990. Lot's of complaints have been discussed
> during that time.
>
>
>
>
>
> > It seems to me, after reading these histories and following this
> > newsgroup for more than a year,  that every critical idea about Lisp
> > in general, and Common Lisp in particular, which is published here,


http://groups.google.com/group/net.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/68df892944933a23#

1986: Against the Tide of Common Lisp:

'I think CL is the WORST thing that could possibly happen to LISP.  In
fact, I
consider it a language different from "true" LISP.  CL has everything
in the
world in it, usually in 3 different forms and 4 different flavors,
with 6
different options.  I think the only thing they left out was
FEXPRs...'

Lot's of ranting follows.

I love this stuff! ;-)

> > had already been thought over by the same people who where responsible
> > for (Common) Lisp's definition and implementation. Thinking about the
> > regular trolls here, I found it particularly exhilarating that the
> > addition of an Algol like syntax to Lisp seems to be one of the major
> > blunders that is repeated over and over by people who do not like S-
> > expressions, but it never catches on (the first attempt even having
> > been the M-expressions of McCarthy).
>
> > The paper by Gabriel and Steele also makes an analysis of the people
> > who use Lisp, which gives to me at least a little bit explanation why
> > there is no real equivalent like CPAN for Lisp. I will not try to
> > explain it, it is one of those things that you have to experience
> > yourself, the ease with which you can find, download and install
> > additional libraries for Perl. There really is no match with Lisp, and
> > please do not mention asdf. asdf is to Lisp, what dpkg is to Debian,
> > but apt is to Debian what CPAN is to Perl (yes, weird comparison, but
> > since Lisp does not have anything like CPAN or apt, it was the only
> > way I could express it).
>
> > Just some thoughts after reading these two enlightening papers.
>
> > Good evening,
>
> > Jurgen
>
> --http://lispm.dyndns.org/
From: alien_guy
Subject: Re: History of Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <pan.2008.09.16.17.12.08@l.org>
On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:47:57 -0700, ······@corporate-world.lisp.de wrote:
>> > It seems to me, after reading these histories and following this
>> > newsgroup for more than a year,  that every critical idea about Lisp
>> > in general, and Common Lisp in particular, which is published here,
> 
> 
> http://groups.google.com/group/net.lang.lisp/browse_thread/
thread/68df892944933a23#
> 
> 1986: Against the Tide of Common Lisp:
> 
> 'I think CL is the WORST thing that could possibly happen to LISP.  In
> fact, I
> consider it a language different from "true" LISP.  CL has everything in
> the
> world in it, usually in 3 different forms and 4 different flavors, with
> 6
> different options.  I think the only thing they left out was FEXPRs...'

which continues with "I forgot to leave out the fact that I do NOT like 
lexical scoping in LISP"
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: History of Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <m33ak0ysnk.fsf@latakia.octopodial-chrome.com>
jurgen_defurne <··············@pandora.be> writes:

>
> The paper by Gabriel and Steele also makes an analysis of the people
> who use Lisp, which gives to me at least a little bit explanation why
> there is no real equivalent like CPAN for Lisp. I will not try to
> explain it, it is one of those things that you have to experience
> yourself, the ease with which you can find, download and install
> additional libraries for Perl. There really is no match with Lisp, and
> please do not mention asdf. asdf is to Lisp, what dpkg is to Debian,
> but apt is to Debian what CPAN is to Perl (yes, weird comparison, but
> since Lisp does not have anything like CPAN or apt, it was the only
> way I could express it).

You're right: ASDF is to apt is to rpm as ASDF-INSTALL is to apt-get is
to yum.  Fortunately, ASDF-INSTALL works pretty well: it integrates with
Cliki to provide a central directory of installable software.

E.g. to install CL-PPCRE:

  (asdf-install:install :cl-ppcre)

However, you're also right that things don't always work out of the
box.  CLSQL, for example, tries to compile every database it has,
including one for which your system has no libraries, which crashes the
install process.  This is ugly.  CLSQL also depends (depended?) on a
custom FFI library which doesn't play well with others.

-- 
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
The pistol is not a weapon; it is an impertinence.  If two men are to
kill one another, they should do so face-to-face, not from a distance,
like vile highwaymen.      --Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Fencing Master