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> Lisp Machine (which was the future when Common Lisp was designed) Common Lisp was actually designed so that you don't need a Lisp Machine. The people working

by lispm 10y ago

> Lisp Machine (which was the future when Common Lisp was designed) Common Lisp was actually designed so that you don't need a Lisp Machine. The people working on it were from CMU (Unix workstations), Lucid (Unix workstations), Franz (Unix/Windows), Apple (Mac), Symbolics (Lispm, PC), Xerox (Lispm, Unix), and many others. Users used an editor-based IDE (like Franz ELI with GNU Emacs, ILISP with Gnu Emacs), a special IDE usually written in Lisp (Franz, LispWorks, Macintosh Common Lisp, Golden CL on Windows, ...) or even a Lisp Machine which combines the IDE with the operating system. > copy files between directories The Symbolics Lisp Listener (REPL + commands) has a command language/interface with a lot of comfort - but with its own usability problems. You would often type Copy File *.lisp.newest >subdir> instead of using the Lisp function COPY-FILE. Still today I tend to keep the Lisp IDE running for days/weeks/months... as long as possible. Sometimes Linux tells me I have to restart the machine after some software update...

brudgers 10y ago
Sorry for not being clear. I was not stating that Lisp Machines were an intended requirement, my intent was to point out that Lisp machines were the zeitgeist during the period when Common Lisp was incubated and developed and hypothesize that this is reflected in the design of the language. As a point of contrast, Smalltalk was developed in part with the idea of Dynabooks in the hands of children. Hence its stereotypical use cases presume a substantial difference between the cognitive capabilities of the system's users and the cognitive capabilities of system's programmers.
- lispm 10y ago
  > hypothesize that this is reflected in the design of the language. Common Lisp was originally mostly a simplified and modernised version of Lisp Machine Lisp. It was supposed to be 'cheaper' for users (industry, military, ...), when delivering software. Without the 'hardware dongle' of a Lisp Machine, which would cost a lot - both hardware and software. One of the main purposes of its existence was to be a standard Lisp able to work on a wide variety of hardware - hardware which was less powerful. Thus the design in the early days was also driven by taking features away from what a Lisp Machine would provide. Less features, easier to implement, able to integrate into different environments. For example Common Lisp provides type declarations. This was added for non-Lisp-Machines. The Lisp Machine compiler ignored type declarations. It did not use it. The CPU does runtime type checking/dispatching on a Lisp Machine. Always. Everything fancy, which was difficult to implement on small machines, was removed. The result was CLtL1. The assumption was that you could develop a Lisp based application (say, an expert system helping with jet turbine maintenance) on some platform of choice and then deliver it to the Airforce on some rugged PC, where it would be used in some airbase. People then thought, why not develop on the PC? Thus various implementations for PCs came up. NASA was putting it on some embedded computer running million miles away from earth, controlling a spacecraft. There was really no limit to where one would have wanted it to be deployed... thus it ended up controlling your cleaning robot (Roomba)...

by lispm 10y ago

brudgers 10y ago

Sorry for not being clear. I was not stating that Lisp Machines were an intended requirement, my intent was to point out that Lisp machines were the zeitgeist during the period when Common Lisp was incubated and developed and hypothesize that this is reflected in the design of the language. As a point of contrast, Smalltalk was developed in part with the idea of Dynabooks in the hands of children. Hence its stereotypical use cases presume a substantial difference between the cognitive capabilities of the system's users and the cognitive capabilities of system's programmers.

lispm 10y ago
> hypothesize that this is reflected in the design of the language. Common Lisp was originally mostly a simplified and modernised version of Lisp Machine Lisp. It was supposed to be 'cheaper' for users (industry, military, ...), when delivering software. Without the 'hardware dongle' of a Lisp Machine, which would cost a lot - both hardware and software. One of the main purposes of its existence was to be a standard Lisp able to work on a wide variety of hardware - hardware which was less powerful. Thus the design in the early days was also driven by taking features away from what a Lisp Machine would provide. Less features, easier to implement, able to integrate into different environments. For example Common Lisp provides type declarations. This was added for non-Lisp-Machines. The Lisp Machine compiler ignored type declarations. It did not use it. The CPU does runtime type checking/dispatching on a Lisp Machine. Always. Everything fancy, which was difficult to implement on small machines, was removed. The result was CLtL1. The assumption was that you could develop a Lisp based application (say, an expert system helping with jet turbine maintenance) on some platform of choice and then deliver it to the Airforce on some rugged PC, where it would be used in some airbase. People then thought, why not develop on the PC? Thus various implementations for PCs came up. NASA was putting it on some embedded computer running million miles away from earth, controlling a spacecraft. There was really no limit to where one would have wanted it to be deployed... thus it ended up controlling your cleaning robot (Roomba)...