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From: clarisse@iexist.flw.att.com (55437-olivier clarisse(haim)463)
Subject: Re: Lisp considered too hard
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Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 23:18:54 GMT
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In article <hbaker-0706951733440001@192.0.2.1>, hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) writes:
[...]
|> Remember garbage collection?  Remember interpreters and incremental
|> debugging?  Remember incremental compilers?  Remember incremental loading?
|> (I could go on for _days_.)
|> 
|> People complain about 5 Megabyte 'hello world' programs.  Have you ever
|> measured the size of a RISC 'hello world' program that runs on a GUI
|> interface these days, with X-Windows (or equivalent), etc., etc.?  You
|> might be shocked and amazed.
|> 
|> The 8 Mbyte main memories required to run Lisp Machine Lisp grossed everyone
|> out in 1980.  But look at what it takes to run MS Windows these days!
|> 16 Mbytes!  So it isn't the _language_ that cost all of the memory, but
|> the _functionality_.  And I'll bet that Lisp was at least an order of
|> magnitude more efficient in its use of that memory than MS Windows is.
|> 
Way to go! You're right on target. I remember the 7Bytes lisp images
on Xerox Dandelions 11 years ago containing all the functionality
of todays MS Windows including + most of its applications and a lot more
(including the ability to crash). These had ethernet, TCP/IP, FTP, WISYWIG
text editors, PostScript printing (actually called Interpress?).

So who needed to invent CORBA (today) when you could distribute objects
(agents) on a network of Lisp machines 10 year ago, plus you could use
TeleRaid and friends to remotely debug OO software distributed across
the network. I really thought these concepts would take over the
world of computing... And yes they did. I have seen every single successful
software vendor steal these concepts one by one, canibalize them and
make them so huge ever since.

Heck, Xerox invented fast windows on CPUs that probably were
20 times slower than the Pentium and at a time when having a 20MBytes hard
drive was a luxury! And look what happened to X windows and MS Windows.
When I look at the computer on my desk with 10 years of evolution behind it,
I see:

"Monster inside"

Written all over it!
Q: How can an industry go so wrong?
A: With lots more money, zero sense of Ethics and zero Knowledge
of its own history.

"That was me speaking, Not It."
-- 
----------------
Olivier Clarisse	     "Languages are not unlike living organisms
Member of Technical Staff     can they adapt and improve to survive?"
AT&T Bell Laboratories
