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From: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.emacs,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Why Lisp? (Was:  Re: Remember how great editors used to be?)
Keywords: elisp, emacs, lisp
Message-ID: <13849@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 30 May 90 06:39:55 GMT
References: <7572@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> <13829@csli.Stanford.EDU> <12602@netcom.UUCP> <13831@csli.Stanford.EDU> <1990May30.052145.15392@agate.berkeley.edu>
Sender: poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser)
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In article <1990May30.052145.15392@agate.berkeley.edu> dankg@ocf.Berkeley.EDU (Dan Kogai) writes:
>	Now I have a question:  Why did Richard Stallman chose lisp out of
>others?  Why wasn't it C or anything?

Stallman discusses the choice of language in the paper I cited in my
previous message in sections 4 "Extensibility and Interpreters" and
5 "Language Features for Extensibility". The most important consideration
is the ability to redefine just about everything at run time, which
is absent in most compiled languages. For example, part of the time
I use Epsilon, which is a very nice EMACS clone with an extension
language very close to C. I like this, as I too prefer C, most of the 
time. But you have to recompile after making most changes, and I find
that this discourages me a bit from making changes.

Another factor that Stallman cites is the availability of dynamic
scope. I don't find his argument for this very persuasive, but he
does and so it affected his choice.

							Bill