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I just finished reading the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (still readily available from Amazon), published in 1962. The book is mind-blowing, because it mixes di
by gcv 17y ago
I just finished reading the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (still readily available from Amazon), published in 1962. The book is mind-blowing, because it mixes discussions of high-order functions with instructions on how to properly lay out programs on punch cards.
The "high level language" which shipped on every microcomputer platform of the 1970s and 1980s was Basic. I have often wondered why. Compared to Lisp, it is inelegant and inexpressive. Perhaps people who hacked larger computers of the era did not interact with microcomputer hobbyists. Perhaps it was too difficult to get Lisp fast enough to be usable on the old hardware, although if it was possible on big iron in the late 1950s, it should have also been possible on microprocessors in the 1970s.
An entire generation of programmers grew up using GOTO <line number> to call subroutines and execute loops. That same generation could have grown up using lambdas. How sad.
- pg 17y agoThere was a tradition of using Basic from the days of printer terminals. A language with s-expressions doesn't work well with printer terminals, and a language with line numbers does. Lisp would also probably have overloaded the hardware of early microcomputers. And then of course there is the fact that Basic seemed accessible, and Lisp seemed frighteningly advanced. Even Lisp hackers seem to have thought so in the 1970s.
- JulianMorrison 17y agoWhat surprises me is the unpopularity of FORTH. The interpreter is simpler than BASIC and the language spans many more levels, from bit groveling to macros and function composition.
- adamo 17y agoLISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (and others) in PDF: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book
- silentbicycle 17y agoNice link! There are PDFs of old APL texts, too.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 17y ago"An entire generation of programmers grew up using GOTO <line number> to call subroutines and execute loops." It was not that bad. In the end, it led to Windows. Oh wait... Now, seriously, we used GOSUB for subroutines.