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From: ram@spice.cs.cmu.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Against the Tide of Common LISP
Message-ID: <1144@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 06:54:47 EST
Article-I.D.: spice.1144
Posted: Mon Feb 23 06:54:47 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Feb-87 06:42:51 EST
References: <2624@well.UUCP>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 53

I found this highly relevant document about the Common Lisp design process
while cleaning my directory.  It was written by Skef Wholey, who implemented
a large part of Spice Lisp while a full-time undergraduate student.  The
Common Lisp spec was being developed at the same time that Spice Lisp was
being written.  This was a cause for no little aggravation for Skef, since he
often had to rewrite code several times.

________________________________________________

			     Common LISP
		(to the tune of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm")

I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more.
See, it was spawned from MACLISP,
And then they threw in Scheme,
And now everybody's made it
"just a little" short of clean.
The language specification is insane.

I ain't gonna hack on Guy Steele's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Guy Steele's LISP no more.
When you mail him a question,
And then wait for a reply,
Well you can sit for weeks now,
And begin to think he's died.
His MAIL.TXT is one great big black hole.

I ain't gonna hack on Fahlman's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Fahlman's LISP no more.
Well he gives you an X-1,
And he puts you on a Perq,
And he asks you with a grin,
"Hey son, how much can you work?"
If I reboot one more time I'll lose my brain.

I ain't gonna hack on Dave Moon's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Dave Moon's LISP no more.
We had a simple SETF,
But it choked on LDB.
So Lunar Dave done fixed it:
Go look at page eighty three.
The Gang of Five they didn't take a poll.

I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more.
With its tons of sequence functions,
And its lexical scoping,
I've now begun to like it,
But the users are moping:
"Without EXPLODE my life is full of pain."

(harmonica and fade)