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My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

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Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#11

Post by pjmlp »

CurtMonash wrote: post #7

The fate of Symbolics wound up having little to do with Stallman, Greenblatt, or LMI. Sun et al. just blew away Symbolics with the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, and the advantages of LISP didn't persuade many people to go with LISP machines instead. Similarly, Rational Software started out making ADA machines, and only survived and prospered after a total pivot away from hardware and ADA alike.

Sadly the same happened with Lillith and Oberon machines from ETHZ.

Hardware targeted to a specific language only has advantage for a little while, until general purpose hardware catches up.

As for the economies of scale of UNIX workstations, former AT&T, Stanford and BSD students got lucky with their workstation startups.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#12

Post by zvrba »

"There's an interesting benefit you can get from using such a powerful language as a version of Lisp as your primary extensibility language. You can implement other languages by translating them into your primary language."

This is so short-sighted hand-waving; it doesn't take into account the existing ecosystem (libraries, tools, etc.) at all. Unlike lisps and schemes, TCL is way less fragmented and has a bunch of libraries for everything. Not to mention that libtcl can be used as a cross-platform layer for files, filesystem, threads, networking, etc.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#14

Post by easytiger »

jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way.

So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder than doing a crossword or a sudoku for the first time.

The book is: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#15

Post by bitwize »

bch wrote: post #9

> At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low opinion of TCL, basically because it wasn't Lisp. I figured this was the case[1], but hadn't actually seen it stated explicitly. His dislike usually seemed broached in hated of a commercial shepherd (Sun), or going on about (perceived or real) technical shortcomings. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408617

He does kinna have a point though -- had Tcl remained Sun's property, Oracle would now be closed-sourcing it and trying to assess huge license and support fees for it. And/or suing people over it.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#16

Post by lispm »

bch wrote: post #9

> At the time, TCL was being pushed heavily for this purpose. I had a very low opinion of TCL, basically because it wasn't Lisp. I figured this was the case[1], but hadn't actually seen it stated explicitly. His dislike usually seemed broached in hated of a commercial shepherd (Sun), or going on about (perceived or real) technical shortcomings. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408617

Ousterhout did some marketing pieces and he stated a lot of random things.

http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html

There was some controversy around it at the time...

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#17

Post by jarcane »

easytiger wrote: post #14
jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

I seriously need to get a copy of this book. I've been hearing about the Little Schemer ever since I first entered the Lisp world; and one of the authors of that edition even works on my favorite Lisp (Racket).

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#18

Post by jules »

jarcane wrote: post #2

"They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off." That bit really jumped out at me, because it's something I've felt about computers in general for a long time. People get it into their heads that computers are hard/complicated/etc., and so they get scared of them, and so th…

A system wide easily accessible undo may solve this.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#19

Post by cpach »

jarcane wrote: post #17
easytiger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

I seriously need to get a copy of this book. I've been hearing about the Little Schemer ever since I first entered the Lisp world; and one of the authors of that edition even works on my favorite Lisp (Racket).

It’s amazingly well written/designed.

Re: My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002)

#20

Post by jwdunne »

jarcane wrote: post #17
easytiger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading a book on a long train journey from Paris to Nice by train that I read usually once a year. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was reading a kids book as it had an elephant on the front. I told her it wasn't, but was in fact one of the most profound books about teaching you to think in a new way. So I let her read it and she got about half way through and she totally got it and loved it. No harder…

I seriously need to get a copy of this book. I've been hearing about the Little Schemer ever since I first entered the Lisp world; and one of the authors of that edition even works on my favorite Lisp (Racket).

It's brilliant. By gradually building up to it, I started to really understand recursion, the power of lambdas and closures, etc. I also started to get Lisp and Scheme in the process. It's a great book, well worth it and if you're venturing out into the Lisp world, I strongly recommend it. If you're not into Scheme, I believe the book also contains equivalent Common Lisp code.
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