Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

pldb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 161 posts

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#151

Post by lispm »

nerdponx wrote: post #144
pfdietz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need all that with SBCL, because you can call all that from a running Lisp program. Perhaps you are asking for that to be available as a library? The size isn't very large so it's not big a deal.

I'm not asking for it as such, but the claim that Lisps now produce "executables" is sometimes still not quite what people have in mind. It's still a whole bundled Lisp runtime, not unlike using PyInstaller to bundle an entire Python runtime in an executable.

Most languages need some runtime. In the case of Lisp it starts with the basic memory management, since Lisp by default needs a garbage collector. This memory management is usually not provided by the operating system. It needs a basic interface to some OS stuff, threads, etc.

A Lisp executable then can be one file which includes a runtime and the (compiled) Lisp code. One could also have these as two separate files.

The there are two basic ways to provide the Lisp code: it's either just compiled code or a memory image of containing the code. SBCL uses the memory image approach. ECL (Embeddable Common Lisp) uses the 'compiled code' approach. ECL compiles to C and then adds the compiled C code to its runtime.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#152

Post by lispm »

jll29 wrote: post #47
pfdietz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. It took a while for a good free Common Lisp to become available. Arguably this wasn't until SBCL (initial release, December 1999).

(Free) LISPs on Linux today look a bit rough, is there any implementation that turns Linux into something that has the look and feel of a LISP machine? Parentheses aside, don't expect people to pick up a language if all they can see is a REPL where the only edit operation that works is DEL(ete), at a time when all other languages have graphical IDEs with syntax coloring, context-sensitive help, single-step debugging…

Most Lisp systems provide a naked version which runs in the terminal without assuming much. Development environments are loaded on top. Thus one would use SBCL typically either with GNU Emacs and the SLIME environment for it.

Alternatively there is something like: McCLIM and SBCL. McCLIM provides a similar user interface management system to what Symbolics used.

If one uses something like LispWorks or Allegro CL, they have their IDEs integrated and one can typically start them directly into the IDE.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#153

Post by lispm »

dleslie wrote: post #143
lispm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GCC being freely available didn't require massive corporate backing. But it had. Most operating systems were written in C. Lot's of supporting libraries were written in C. Stallman chose to implement a C compiler because of that. There is and was a huge eco-system around C just because it is a low-level language used to implement the basics of many systems. Lisp was only accidentally used for a few operating system…

Stallman also chose to build Emacs and Emacs Lisp. He could have made an editor extendable in c only, but did not. Emacs' problem, then and now, was non-existent, then terrible DOS and Windows support. Really, the problem was that there was no DOS or Windows lisp available for cheap, or free. Even GCC was only available thanks to a small company, Delorie, who made djgpp. I would have greatly preferred to program in l…

> Emacs' problem

IIRC, Stallman's original mission was to write a 'free' operating system (-> GNU Hurd). For that he needed a C compiler, an editor, a Lisp, etc.

Integrating GNU Emacs into proprietary operating systems like Microsoft DOS / Windows or Apple's MacOS wasn't his priority.

There were a bunch of other Lisps on DOS/Windows: Xlisp, MuLisp, CLISP, EcoLisp, RefLisp, LinkLisp, Corman Lisp, Golden Common Lisp, Procyon Common Lisp, Allegro CL, Medley, LispWorks (later), NanoLisp, Software Engineer, Star Sapphire Common Lisp, ...

Maybe they were too late, didn't fit your requirements, etc. But it was not that there was none.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#154

Post by pjmlp »

dleslie wrote: post #148
pjmlp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly anyone cared about GCC in those days, most compilers were still commercial. In fact, GCC only started to matter to UNIX folks, because Sun introduced the concept of user and developer UNIX workloads, and all UNIX vendors followed along, making the UNIX development tools into an additional package one had to buy. Thus the race to improve GCC started.

gcc was relevant on DOS and Windows thanks to djgpp; it was basically the only free option for a time.

No one cared about it, Borland and Microsoft dominated, those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#155

Post by p_l »

lispm wrote: post #134
p_l wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget dedicated "delivery" 36xx series machines from Symbolics, which were lower priced specifically because they weren't supposed to be used with the development environment.

For those there was also a system called "Firewall", which shields the end user from the underlying Lisp in some way. Then there were also delivery systems on the Ivory. There was even a stripped down Lisp operating system called Minima for those, IIRC.

Minima was, AFAIK, special real-time variant of the Genera system, with noticeable differences - it also ran a different firmware at least on Ivory (differences in FEPOS interface from what I figured spelunking in code).

Minima was also used for some debug tooling for building the machines themselves, iirc.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#156

Post by lispm »

p_l wrote: post #155
lispm wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those there was also a system called "Firewall", which shields the end user from the underlying Lisp in some way. Then there were also delivery systems on the Ivory. There was even a stripped down Lisp operating system called Minima for those, IIRC.

Minima was, AFAIK , special real-time variant of the Genera system, with noticeable differences - it also ran a different firmware at least on Ivory (differences in FEP OS interface from what I figured spelunking in code). Minima was also used for some debug tooling for building the machines themselves, iirc.

A customer wanted to have multiple nodes running Minima for a network switch, IIRC.

Having Genera/Ivory boards in a Mac was also seen as a delivery vehicle. For example:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/symbolics/software/genera_8/Mac...

"MacIvory Delivery is not suitable for application development or debugging.... MacIvory Delivery is tailored for delivery environments"

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#157

Post by mark_l_watson »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #10
lispm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if the first Newton MessagePad didn't have less than 1 MB RAM. ;-) The first Newton had 640kbyte of RAM and a 20 Mhz ARM Processor. It was the result of bringing down the cost. It wasn't well received, since the handwriting recognition was bad and the machine was underpowered. The 130 model fixed the latter. In later OS versions the handwriting became useful, eventually. I had later the wonderful Newton MessageP…

I agree. I bought a Newton after having lunch with Larry Tesler (John Kona also dined with us, a fun lunch!). Larry was pitching me on converting my first Common Lisp book to Dylan. I ended up just tossing my Newton in the trash. Sad.

EDIT: “John Kona” —> “John Koza”

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#158

Post by wrycoder »

Jtsummers wrote: post #119
bambataa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you’re right, it would have been Paredit. I guess my point is that syntax that works very well with a correctly configured editor used by someone who knows what they’re doing is going to have a higher barrier to entry than a language that can be easily edited in Notepad.

Lisp is no harder to edit in notepad than any other language. It is just a text editor and lisp source is just text. And paredit is a misfeature for most people, turn it off. That should have been the real takeaway. It is not part of a ”correctly configured editor” and it isn’t installed or activated by default anyways so is easy to avoid.

Yeah, all you have to do is keep track of the number of closing parens in your head.

It’s a lot easier when the editor highlights matching pairs.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#159

Post by headhasthoughts »

cgay wrote: post #137
headhasthoughts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you actually have to do it is trawling through git repos to find an old version of Gwydion, bashing at it for a while, and maybe getting it to compile on modern platforms. Look for 2.4, then rewind, then pass a config flag, and a few more steps. I wouldn't call Dylan thriving, unless you're a Windows user that really doesn't care about bootstrapping your language. It's alive though, in the same sense that Mil…

Gwydion Dylan has been out of the picture for years. Open Dylan is the only maintained implementation. Perhaps you went down a wrong path....

You can't bootstrap OpenDylan from source without a Dylan compiler. You can bootstrap Gwydion without one with substantial elbow work, which you can then pivot into bootstrapping OpenDylan.

I know what I was doing, and if you look elsewhere in the thread, I was right about what the GUIX maintainer wanted. Not to get egg on your face.

Re: A brief interview with Common Lisp co-creator Dr. Scott Fahlman

#160

Post by skissane »

pjmlp wrote: post #154
dleslie wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gcc was relevant on DOS and Windows thanks to djgpp; it was basically the only free option for a time.

No one cared about it, Borland and Microsoft dominated, those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar.

It was popular with people who came from a Unix background and wanted to port Unix software to DOS/Windows (or even OS/2). While the API differences were still a challenge, GCC did better at code ported from Unix than Borland/Microsoft/etc did - especially since a lot of that software was already being compiled under GCC on Unix anyway

True that Borland/Microsoft was more popular among professional DOS/Windows developers, especially those for whom that was their native platform

> those that could not buy them, would get copies from a street bazar

Teenage me didn’t know of any “street bazaars” selling Microsoft/Borland developer tool warez. But I walked into the local computer shop and saw some modestly priced CD-ROMs, with GCC (among other things), and convinced my Dad to buy them for me.

Post reply on HN