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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: CL History (was Re: Why do people like C?)
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References: <3854ul$r5r@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> <WELCH.94Oct20153410@thor.oar.net> <386vm7$b80@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 20:32:46 GMT
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In article <386vm7$b80@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> sef@CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Fahlman) writes:
>
>In article <WELCH.94Oct20153410@thor.oar.net> welch@thor.oar.net (Arun Welch) writes:
>
>    Scott, you're the only one of the "gang of
>    five" still following this, you might have some insights...
>
>I didn't spot anything in Jonl's old message that is factually
>incorrect.  It is, of course, a view of those parts of the Common Lisp
>startup that Jonl was most involved in. 

Could someone send me this message of Jonl's?  I haven't seen it.

There are BTW substantial on-line archives of the e-mail discussion
that took place while CL was being designed.  I'm not sure exactly
where they are these days...

Anyone interested in the history of Lisp around CL and in how
Cl relates to other Lisps should look at MacLisp, Franz Lisp,
Lisp Machine Lisp (various editions) and VAX NIL.  Common Lisp
did not appear out of the blue with some wild and crazy
semantics designed to wipe out entire Lispish forms of life.

Moreover, Common Lisp is in many ways a substantial cleanup
and improvement over earlier Lisps.  Consider, for instance,
unwind-protect vs the several mechanisms of InterLisp.
Consider full lexical scoping vs the partly lexical and
different-in-interpreter-and-compiler rules of MacLisp
and related Lisps such as LM Lisp and Franz and the
variety of options in InterLisp.

There's no doubt that people would do things differently these
days, which is why Dylan and EuLisp and ISLisp have some things
in common with Common and not others.  But if you look at the
other Lisps around at the time and at where Lisp seemed to be
headed, Common Lisp does make sense and it was in many ways better
than the alternatives.

-- jeff
