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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Against the Tide of Common LISP
Message-ID: <876@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jun-86 22:50:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.876
Posted: Mon Jun 30 22:50:12 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Jul-86 05:20:15 EDT
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 62


From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
>If you have a proposal for what the user environment should look like,
>by all means let's hear it!  Remember that you have to accommodate fancy
>interfaces on Lisp machines and dumb terminals on IBMs and everything
>else in between.

[first off, this is a general statement, not a flame or anything]

Hmm, maybe I'm more disturbed by this statement than any other so
far, not that it isn't obviously true, it is.

Hey, I'll live with CL, as I've said before, give me a sharp knife
and a length of rope...(and I'll probably hang myself.) Having used
Lisp for almost 10 years now and basically loving the language I
was disturbed by a number of things I saw in the Steele book. But,
I'm open minded, maybe there are things I just don't "see" about
the exigencies. I still hate macros. Doubt you'll shake me of that.

Back to the above, I believe you, I guess I'm just disappointed that
the "standard" gave in to this kind of thing, I know I know, pragmatism,
but since when have "us lispers" ever yielded to that except when we
had to (single case lisps?)

I would have thought that the lisp machines would have been a strong
indication that to make lisp a raving success YOU MUST HAVE AN
ENVIRONMENT, well, maybe not MUST, but it does seem to be where the
action has been since around 1980 (or earlier if you count PARC.)

When are we going to screw up the courage to tell them to throw
away their damn trashy hardware, this field is too young to settle
in like that. I certainly remember the days when everything had
to run on card images to be "useful", then paper terminals (hey,
everyone doesn't *HAVE* a CRT, will you CS types get out of the
clouds!), I guess we just have to decide when the next phase has
been reached.

Gee, I sure hope the Multi-Media-Mail folks aren't saying their
stuff is useless unless it works on a 3278.

Maybe we *do* build our own prisons.

>Imagine the howls of outrage from Unix people if the standard
>is changed to require at least 4 extra bits on each character, and
>keyboard shift keys to go with them.

I'm a "unix people" I guess, I wouldn't howl, I think it's the
only general purpose OS that even *might* adapt given the challenge.
Most of the others are still nervous about upper/lower case character
sets and the dreaded COLUMN 72!

As a matter of fact, the day they howl is the day I stop being
a "unix people". Maybe you're right, maybe the day is coming.
UNIX "solved" device, process and file system abstraction, maybe
this next gulp will choke it? User abstraction (or is that distraction.)

The twelve-piece-suiters are carpetbagging on our brains.

It sure looks like the theme of the 80's is "Standards vs Innovation",
not just computers either, life imitates art ya know.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University