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From: dcorbett@phobos.socs.uts.edu.au (Dan Corbett)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Is this the end of the lisp wave?
Message-ID: <18944@ultima.socs.uts.edu.au>
Date: 16 Jan 91 02:44:12 GMT
References: <127724@linus.mitre.org>
Sender: news@ultima.socs.uts.edu.au
Lines: 32

djb@babypuss.mitre.org (David J. Braunegg) writes:

>>Lack of demand due to Common LISP's enormous size, complexity, resource
>>requirements, training, etc.
>>
>>Common LISP effectively died from obesity.


>OK.  What are the problems preventing a smaller, more efficient Lisp
>so that we aren't forced to use the almost-a-programming-language C?

We had those Lisps and we threw them away.  People got obsessed with big and
powerful languages.  Here's how you too can help bring back useful Lisps.

1) Read McCarthy's paper, in which he describes the whole purpose of
	inventing Lisp. ("Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions,"
	CACM 3,4, April 1960)  

2) Compare McCarthy's description to Common Lisp, and see where the authors
	of CL have completely deviated from the original intent of Lisp.

3) Look at the older implementations of Lisp and see the beauty of a simple,
	well-defined language.  You don't have to go back to 1.5, take a
	look at Franz or UCI Lisp.

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Dan Corbett
Department of Computer Science
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia
dcorbett@ultima.socs.uts.edu.au
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