Xref: utzoo comp.lang.lisp:3618 comp.lang.scheme:1649 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!cons.utah.edu!kessler From: kessler%cons.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Robert R. Kessler) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: Virtues of Lisp syntax Message-ID: <1990Sep10.091911.20877@hellgate.utah.edu> Date: 10 Sep 90 15:19:10 GMT References: <1990Aug26.205018.18067@cbnewsc.att.com> <1350028@otter.hpl.hp.com> <3368@skye.ed.ac.uk> <667@argosy.UUCP> <33695@cup.portal.com> <33709@cup.portal.com> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 22 RLISP was an Algol-like Syntax that was a translator into Portable Standard Lisp. To those of us who implemented and subsequently used it, there were many mixed views. Some people felt that they liked it because they didn't like the ``ugly'' Lisp syntax. They still had access to all of the Lisp operations, but didn't have to put up with the parens (remember that when we were RLISP, we didn't have fancy text editors that did paren bouncing, auto-indentation, etc -- try writing Lisp code without the editor features, it really is much more difficult). The others among us, felt that RLISP just got in the way, so we used PSL. RLISP has currently diverged some what. PSL is still be distributed (by us and others) and supports a flavor of RLISP. That version is still in use by the Alpha_1 group here at Utah which has a solid modelling package, which has a mode where the users can define models in RLISP. The REDUCE algebra system (which is also still being distributed) has a slightly different version for supporting computer algebra (in that case, RLISP works well -- the most common users of REDUCE are non-computer scientists who find things like infix operators a requirement). Finally, there is something called RLISP-88 from Rand, which has extended RLISP with concurrency operations, an object system, and other neat features. B.