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From: djz@spice.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Spice Lisp (and more Common Lisp arguments)
Message-ID: <1022@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 24-Jun-86 13:01:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: spice.1022
Posted: Tue Jun 24 13:01:43 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jun-86 07:34:52 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 40

OK, Mr. Jacobs, so what's wrong with Spice Lisp?  Why do you keep emphasizing
the fact that lots of implementations are based on it?  You ask when a good
implementation of Common Lisp will come out that is not based on SPICE.
Why?  Why is it somehow a negative feature for an implementation to use some
of our code?  It is the existance of this public domain implementation that
has helped Common Lisp be as popular (and as "common") as it is now.  If
Spice Lisp were some shoddy hopelessly brain-damaged system, I could
understand your concern about people making use of the code, but this is
certainly not the case.  Did an experimental robot-taxi being programmed in
a Spice Lisp-based language run over your mother or something?

	Dan

P.S. I do not think you did Stan Sheb's message justice.  Why should all
your old UCI Lisp code run on Common Lisp without modification?  Problems
like the ones you described with MEMBER can be fixed with a single stroke of
a good text editor (change all "(MEMBER ....)" to "(MEMBER .... :test
#'equal)" or whatever).  And you can't get our of the definition of Real
Lisp that easily.  How do you look at a property list in RL?  PLIST (Franz
and MacLisp) or GETPROPLIST (InterLisp)?  How do you define a function?
Where is the definition stored?  In a function cell (InterLisp and Franz)?
On the property list (Maclisp)?  I don't buy your claim that there is
something called Real Lisp that represents some sort of consensus about what
functions should be called, etc.  If it really existed, Common Lisp (the
concept, not the actual language) would not have been necessary.
	I am reletively new to the Lisp world (I am proud to be the youngest
member of the Spice Lisp project by several years), so I am perhaps
insensitive to the problems of those who find that the language they once
knew and loved has now changed.  But I stand by most of what Shebs and
Hendrick said and I don't find your reply very satisfactory.  Shebs' point
about the confusion of having code run under certain scope rules when
interpreted and others when compiled is a good one, I think, and much pain
went into to keeping this sort of thing from happening in Common Lisp.
	If Shebs does not take the time to post again, defending his
original message (quite understandable, I think), I'll post a better
rebuttle.  It is only because he was able to make his points better than I
think I could have that I am not doing so now.

P.P.S. It's not as easy to bad mouth Common Lisp here as it was on Bix, is
it Jeff? (-: