Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
hanshuebner.github.io
Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
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Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#2There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome.
If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#3There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome. If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
"Lisp is a minimal fixed point amongst programming languages. It's not an invention, but a discovery. That's why it won't just go away." - Brian Beckman [1]
That said, LISP machines are quite interesting on their own, because they follow a different architecture compared to (mainly) register-based x86 and similar.
[1] https://twitter.com/lorentzframe/status/821001730938654724
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#4There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome. If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
A big part, especially back in 1984 was that LISP tended to be slow on traditional PC hardware. Also somewhat memory hungry, which was a definite problem back in the 80s when memory was expensive.
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#5There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome. If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
You are commenting on a site run by Lisp
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#6Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are commenting on a site run by Lisp
Are you saying that makes Lisp mainstream?
It's more mainstream than the $NEW-AWESOME-JAVASCRIPT-FRAMEWORK. Not being mainstream doesn't mean that something isn't awesome. There are lots of awesome discoveries trapped in research/academia because the overton window of the current technology community is shifted too far to "What I am used to", or because nobody cares to look.
Eventually some of these ideas will get dislodged and fall down to us, but you can't rely on that. If you read about Lisp's history it's very obvious why it is rejected by people at the moment.
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#8The classic joke in here is that if you look up "fascism" in the index, it goes to the section about logging in. User authentication wasn't part of the dream, so having been forced to build it, they embedded a dig on it right in the manual.
https://hanshuebner.github.io/lmman/files.xml#fascism
I think there are a few other jokes in the index but I don't recall what they are.
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#9There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome. If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
I don't see why language quality should have anything to do at all with mainstream usage.
PHP can be considered a mainstream language today. Even COBOL in some parts of the industry. Are they any better because of that?
Re: Lisp Machine Manual (1984)
#10There seems to be plenty of people who think Lisp is awesome. If so, then why hasn't it become "mainstream"?
Most of Lisps novel features have been incorporated into the mainstream high-level languages of today: Python, Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Objective-C. The one that's still relatively unique to lisp is homoiconicity-based macros, but some non-s-expression languages like Nim and Elixir are able to accomplish them. And then there's languages like Clojure and Hy which are gaining mainstream status slowly through over-zealous adoption by disgruntled Rubyists and Pythonistas.