+-------------------------------------- Yes, we want InterLisp back.
Read Erik Sandewall, The Lisp Experience, 1978
It gives valuable insight in the discussion of "structure vs. text" with respect to user interfaces (editors, histories, ...) in the InterLisp vs. MacLisp communities. The Appendix has a letter by Stallman and an answer by Sandewall regarding these issues. Common Lisp and Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong direction, if the direction would be more pure Lisp. +--------------------------------------
I couldn't get that article since it is no publicly available. Could someone please post it here? Or could you please summarize why CL and Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong direction?
> +-------------------------------------- > Yes, we want InterLisp back.
> Read Erik Sandewall, The Lisp Experience, 1978
> It gives valuable insight in the discussion of "structure vs. text" > with respect to user interfaces (editors, histories, ...) > in the InterLisp vs. MacLisp communities. The Appendix has > a letter by Stallman and an answer by Sandewall regarding these > issues. Common Lisp and Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong > direction, if the direction would be more pure Lisp. > +--------------------------------------
> I couldn't get that article since it is no publicly available. Could > someone please post it here? Or could you please summarize why CL and > Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong direction?
> Thanks...
get a Lisp system, write some hundred kilo lines of Lisp, etc. - maybe that helps to get an idea.
Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally give some ideas:
> Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > give some ideas:
Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the same conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points instead of expecting me to find out myself?
> Rainer Joswig <jos...@lispmachine.de> wrote in message <news:joswig-62B3C4.22282105092003@news.fu-berlin.de>... > > get a Lisp system, write some hundred kilo lines of Lisp, > > etc. - maybe that helps to get an idea.
> > Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > > give some ideas:
> Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I > don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the same > conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points instead > of expecting me to find out myself?
Because then you'd be only learning second hand? Nothing like going back to the original source and finding out for yourself.
> > > Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > > > give some ideas:
> > Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I > > don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the > > same conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points > > instead of expecting me to find out myself?
> Because then you'd be only learning second hand? Nothing > like going back to the original source and finding out for > yourself.
If anyone wants to try this, you can always grab a copy of lfg on ftp.parc.com under /pub/lfg. As far as I can tell, it has most if not all of the Xerox D-machine lisp environment. For the hardcore, it even has sedit.
-- Fred Gilham gil...@csl.sri.com The density of a textbook must be inversely proportional to the density of the students using it. --- Dave Stringer-Calvert
> > Rainer Joswig <jos...@lispmachine.de> wrote in message <news:joswig-62B3C4.22282105092003@news.fu-berlin.de>... > > > get a Lisp system, write some hundred kilo lines of Lisp, > > > etc. - maybe that helps to get an idea.
> > > Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > > > give some ideas:
> > Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I > > don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the same > > conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points instead > > of expecting me to find out myself?
> Because then you'd be only learning second hand? Nothing > like going back to the original source and finding out for > yourself.
I think I have to restore the original context. Rainer Joswig made the following statement:
" Common Lisp and Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong direction, if the direction would be more pure Lisp."
This was HIS statement. So all I want to know from him is why does he think so. Am I asking too much? If I made a statement like: "I think C is a bad language." and someone asks me "Why do you think so?" I don't think he would be happy with: "Ohhh, read the manuals and program in C for one year and you will find out."
Also isn't this newsgroup for learning second hand? Why do we ask other people questions? It's because we don't want to go invest a lot of time doing everything again... That's what newsgroups are for.
> " Common Lisp and Emacs are the wrong step in the wrong > direction, if the direction would be more pure Lisp."
Now I Lisped thru many small applications that over time became bigger and more complicated, with the well known Lisp dialect AutoLisp. Guess most will think that AutoLisp is a very small subset but AutoLisp acturly carry all the basic printing and math. functions you ask , -------- but surely it is a primitive dialect as either you use the functions avaible or you start your programming defining these to be used within the same application. But isn't this where Lisp "went wrong" ; that instead of a simple evaluator we now must fight a number of compiler errors , just like any other high level languages, for the only sake to save a few bytes in memmory..
Just think back to the day's where the only foult you could encounter, was a misplaced parentets trying to persave the evaluator that the next 20 Kb. shuld be a function and the rest not in the specified order, ---------- where today's C++ style compilers tell you a wierd error messeage, that ask years of experience to grasp. Beside the more C++ like and profesional wearing both rubber boots, diving suit , life jacket and slippers , you lost the magic of writing tree by four lines recursive code , where you can freely replace atoms with functions, ----- use functions as parameters and with today's computers experience a memmory overflow in one tenth a second, where atleast in the old day's some 10 years ago, you could sollow a memmory overflow.
With Lisp there alway's was a few things I been missing ; if they were there I would proberly be a good programmer where today, if I want to compile a just decent program, I will be fighting lame compiler directives making it impossible to compile a simple "hello world" , except the compoiler will tell me a goodby to my lame hopes to use compiled code or even the dream of it ; ------------- and that is realy wierd, as when I back then a few years ago was still doing Lisp, my code looked very simular to how things was done in the C.L. bible ; when I first came over a true manual in CommonLisp, it was obvious for me, that even the limitations in AutoLisp, I was making the same matrixes to make the same geometric calculations, as if I was pointing to a function Lib. and just using already made functions . Acturly my code and my mind was as I se it now split in two ; either doing the lot in tree line recursive functions or doing the boring tradisional type of coding, that when reading the code, make Common Lisp no different than any other high level language ; ----------- realy I thought Lisp to be thee language, that had the best chance to develob into a better compilable language , Now I can do what I need to do , in terms of defing the functions I need and I will not need to fight a strict C++ style compiler making it impossible ever to make any application work within Windows as anything but an application within another program working with the set windows options. But I think that the reson for this, is nip picking byte accounting and theoretical nonsense about saving avaiable mem. Anyway CommonLisp compilers is obviously made for programmers that just aswell could write in C++, ---------- they are no help for those who thought Lisp and the whole concept with Lisp to be fundamentaly different than those of other tradisional high level.
> > Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > > give some ideas:
> Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I > don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the same > conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points instead > of expecting me to find out myself?
It's kind of hard to summarize, but I may be able to give you an idea.
Rainer's suggestion that you write some hundred kilolines of Lisp is somewhat misleading, because part of the charm of Interlisp was that source code was of only secondary importance. The basic development philosophy was based on dynamic modification of an executing Interlisp image. So, your starting point in developing an application is an Interlisp image. That core image doesn't do what you want your application to do, so you start modifying it by altering memory-resident Lisp data structures. *One* way of doing that is by writing some code and READ+EVALing it, but -- at least back in Interlisp-10 days -- the more common approach was by using an editor that destructively modified memory-resident data structures, the data that is your code. When you eventually modify Interlisp enough that it has become your application -- or you're just knocking off for the day -- you dump a new image. If you want to, you can write out the current definitions of all the and variables that have been altered, as summary of what you've done. But it's not necessarily all that useful, since there's no guarantee that loading that code into the original executing image will result in modifying it so that it behaves in the same way as the new executing image (for subtle reasons that I won't go into here).
Interlisp is remembered for lots of other stuff as well -- such as DWIM (Do What I Mean), which could often successfully guess that when you typed "9" you meant "(", and that when you typed "CRD" you meant "CDR" -- but the basic idea that the programmer's job is to sculpt a ball of mud into his or her desired application, rather than "write source code", is the fundamental difference, IMHO. I suppose one could argue this is basically "just" a gestalt switch, since the mud is code after all, and that modifying a list of strings using Emacs is a huge efficiency win over modifying sexprs with Interlisp's structure editor (which is certainly is). But it must be admitted that Interlispers viewed the development task from a differently perspective, and some of us still think it was a nice scenic viewpoint.
Anyway, for the article Rainer referred to, go to the library -- you remember the library from the dark days before the Web, right? -- and have a look at the book _Interactive Programming Environments_.
r...@sdl.sri.com (Bob Riemenschneider) wrote in message <news:ce15782d.0309081250.77f67fd6@posting.google.com>... > the basic idea that the > programmer's job is to sculpt a ball of mud into his or her > desired application, rather than "write source code" [...] > have a look at the book _Interactive Programming > Environments_.
Are there other such books/sources on lisp UIs that people recommend? I was actually interested in writing a similar system; from the perspective of creating code by refactoring existing code (for other languages which really could use less finger-typing). I guess I couldn't have expected this to be a particularly novel idea...
> Anyway, for the article Rainer referred to, go to the library -- > you remember the library from the dark days before the Web, > right?
If by "library" you're talking about Kazaa, it's not there, so I ordered it from Amazon for 5 bux.
this was a really useful answer! Now I think I understand it. It is amazing how many articles have been posted in this thread until your answer. The signal to noise ratio is really low here.
thelif...@gmx.net (thelifter) writes: > this was a really useful answer! Now I think I understand it. It is > amazing how many articles have been posted in this thread until your > answer. The signal to noise ratio is really low here.
Btw, if you really think this, I suspect you're not reading many threads. While indeed some threads that do not seek technical responses get side-tracked on unproductive philosophy and/or politics, the ones that are oriented toward getting something done get pretty good response, and most people grade the signal to noise ratio a lot higher than for the average newsgroup.
> > Reading the InterLisp manuals may additionally > > give some ideas:
> Your answer doesn't make much sense to me. I was asking because I > don't want to go trough all those experiences to arrive at the same > conclusions as you. So how about summarizing the main points instead > of expecting me to find out myself?
Conclusions are only semantic symbols; triggers which are anchored in the body of experience. Without the accompaniment of experience, they have no meaning.
If conclusions are so great, why not be satisfied with ``Lisp sucks?'' Does that not summarize everything so you don't have to find out anything for yourself? Someone who carries that conclusion, having arrived at it himself, has a body of knowledge to which he constantly refers whenever that conclusion surfaces in his consciousness. That body is not discarded when the conclusion is made, otherwise the conclusion may as well be discarded also.
Your attitude is that you want to avoid learning. It's as if you are trying to collect a scrapbook of negative factoids about programming languages which serve as excuses to avoid learning those languages. Can you point to some project you have worked on in some programming language that you liked?
Imagine a tourist who arrives at a strange town, finds an information office for travellers and asks ``where can I book a tour of the skankiest slums of this town so I can feel good about leaving it as soon as possible? Is there some nice pamphlet about everything that is wrong with this place that I can pass along to people so they can stay away? Also, what's the fastest way out of this dive?'' I would question why such a tourist didn't just stay home.
The right way to explore a new programming language is to find out the positive space: what kind of programming it allows, or at least does not prevent. If there is some purpose behind your inquiry, because you want to write some software in a specific application area, investigating the suitability of the language to that specific area is indeed valuable, because it can save you from wasting time. But you seem to have no area in mind; you are just looking for the weakness, which indicates that you have no real purpose. For any given programming language, you can find weaknesses, any of which could be used as lame exuses to avoid it.
> Conclusions are only semantic symbols; triggers which are anchored > in the body of experience. Without the accompaniment of experience, > they have no meaning.
> If conclusions are so great, why not be satisfied with ``Lisp > sucks?'' Does that not summarize everything so you don't have to > find out anything for yourself? Someone who carries that conclusion, > having arrived at it himself, has a body of knowledge to which he > constantly refers whenever that conclusion surfaces in his > consciousness. That body is not discarded when the conclusion is > made, otherwise the conclusion may as well be discarded also.
> Your attitude is that you want to avoid learning. It's as if you are > trying to collect a scrapbook of negative factoids about programming > languages which serve as excuses to avoid learning those languages. > Can you point to some project you have worked on in some programming > language that you liked?
> Imagine a tourist who arrives at a strange town, finds an > information office for travellers and asks ``where can I book a tour > of the skankiest slums of this town so I can feel good about leaving > it as soon as possible? Is there some nice pamphlet about everything > that is wrong with this place that I can pass along to people so > they can stay away? Also, what's the fastest way out of this dive?'' > I would question why such a tourist didn't just stay home.
> The right way to explore a new programming language is to find out > the positive space: what kind of programming it allows, or at least > does not prevent. If there is some purpose behind your inquiry, > because you want to write some software in a specific application > area, investigating the suitability of the language to that specific > area is indeed valuable, because it can save you from wasting time. > But you seem to have no area in mind; you are just looking for the > weakness, which indicates that you have no real purpose. For any > given programming language, you can find weaknesses, any of which > could be used as lame exuses to avoid it.
That was a wonderful article. I've saved it for future reference.
> Btw, if you really think this, I suspect you're not reading many > threads. While indeed some threads that do not seek technical > responses get side-tracked on unproductive philosophy and/or politics, > the ones that are oriented toward getting something done get pretty > good response, and most people grade the signal to noise ratio a lot > higher than for the average newsgroup.
What do you mean by "the ones that are oriented toward getting something done"? I assume you mean the more "technical" threads. But then your argument doesn't make sense. You do not know why a person is asking any question, even a technical one. He might be asking just out of curiosity, not necessaryly because he wants to solve a practical problem.
I think the newsgroup is also here for technical questions, to increase ones knowledge.
Additionally, may I remind you of another thread I started where I asked about a free Lisp implementation that can access a MySql database? Please go and read the first answer I received from one of the "experts" here on the newsgroup. He wrote "Please do not feed the trolls", and he even made the effort to add a nice ASCII art picture:
Sorry, I have more to do than to answer your posting, I will just give it a short answer because it isn't related to the topic in any way.
From the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English":
conclusion: ...belief or opinion which is the result of reasoning
Merriam-Webster: a reasoned judgment.
In other words, conclusions are totally independent from experience, they are a pure rational entity. You don't need experience to arrive at some conclusion. I will give your examples to make it clearer:
I never had a car accident, but fasten my seat belts. Never had cancer, but know the hazards of smoking, etc... Never programmed in Lisp(only minor stuff) but know that it is probably the best language around, and a great deal of that knowledge comes from this newsgroup and the web.
>>Btw, if you really think this, I suspect you're not reading many >>threads. While indeed some threads that do not seek technical >>responses get side-tracked on unproductive philosophy and/or politics, >>the ones that are oriented toward getting something done get pretty >>good response, and most people grade the signal to noise ratio a lot >>higher than for the average newsgroup.
> What do you mean by "the ones that are oriented toward getting > something done"?
What /I/ was going to say to your inflammatory "signal to noise" crap was that you have to consider the OP; some just get answered, some get told to go fuck themselves. Don't pretend you are not a variable in this equation. Others are getting help where you are getting flamed. This is not rocket science, which is not to say socializing well is easier than rocket science.
On 9 Sep 2003 19:18:46 -0700, thelif...@gmx.net (thelifter) wrote:
> Additionally, may I remind you of another thread I started where I > asked about a free Lisp implementation that can access a MySql > database? Please go and read the first answer I received from one of > the "experts" here on the newsgroup. He wrote "Please do not feed > the trolls", and he even made the effort to add a nice ASCII art > picture:
Well, you came here in good faith, asked a simple question and were immediately flamed? Bummer!
But no! Check the link below the fine ASCII art (originally by Gareth McCaughan IIRC) and you'll see that about the first thing you ever posted to c.l.l was a lengthy article titled "Why I can't use Lisp" [1] which resulted in more than 70 follow-ups. You have since taken part in a couple of c.l.l threads so one can assume that you should know what's there and what's not. Don't tell me you've never heard of CLiki or you are too dumb to find the FAQ or search Google.
Now, in March 2003 you suddenly post an article where you ask about a "free" CL implementation for Windows and Linux which can access MySQL and Java. Wait a minute - weren't you the one who told us that such a thing doesn't exist just a few months earlier. Let me quote:
"[...] there are no good compilers for free."
"But what does that help if you can't generate efficient code with it?"
"A lot of people talk about the nice abstractions that Lisp enables, but what if that produces slow, lousy code."
Kenny Tilton <ktil...@nyc.rr.com> writes: > What /I/ was going to say to your inflammatory "signal to noise" crap > was that you have to consider the OP; some just get answered, some get > told to go fuck themselves. Don't pretend you are not a variable in > this equation. Others are getting help where you are getting > flamed. This is not rocket science, which is not to say socializing > well is easier than rocket science.
In effect, I was saying the same thing. These things become somewhat self-fulfilling prophecies. If you come here complaining that the free service you get isn't up to par, you often find that people are happy to continue to supply you with exactly that same level of service.
thelif...@gmx.net (thelifter) writes: > Sorry, > I have more to do than to answer your posting, I will just give it a > short answer because it isn't related to the topic in any way.
> From the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English":
> conclusion: ...belief or opinion which is the result of reasoning
> Merriam-Webster: a reasoned judgment.
> In other words, conclusions are totally independent from experience, > they are a pure rational entity. You don't need experience to arrive > at some conclusion. I will give your examples to make it clearer:
> I never had a car accident, but fasten my seat belts. > Never had cancer, but know the hazards of smoking, etc...
You can't really say this. If you had never seen or heard of a vehicle before, then would you fasten your seat belt upon entering it?
Likewise, before the hazards of smoking were generally known, you may have had no qualms about smoking.
We all experience these things indirectly, through knowing or hearing of countless examples of auto deaths due to not wearing seatbelts or people getting cancer from smoking. But it is still this indirect experience which allows you to make a conclusion.
thelif...@gmx.net (thelifter) writes: > the "experts" here on the newsgroup. He wrote "Please do not feed the > trolls", and he even made the effort to add a nice ASCII art picture:
thelif...@gmx.net (thelifter) writes: > Sorry, ... > In other words, conclusions are totally independent from experience, > they are a pure rational entity. You don't need experience to arrive > at some conclusion.
First of all, maybe there is some misunderstanding going on. In this article where I thanked the parent for his post(in this thread), I was not being ironic. I was serious:
> told to go fuck themselves. Don't pretend you are not a variable in this > equation. Others are getting help where you are getting flamed. This is > not rocket science, which is not to say socializing well is easier than > rocket science.
Thanks for the reminder, if you can tell me where I went wrong it would be even better. Socializing is not easy, like in technical questions I'm thankful for all that are willing to help.
Edi Weitz <e...@agharta.de> wrote in message <news:87znhdjck2.fsf@bird.agharta.de>... > Well, you came here in good faith, asked a simple question and were > immediately flamed? Bummer!
> But no! Check the link below the fine ASCII art (originally by Gareth > McCaughan IIRC) and you'll see that about the first thing you ever
Ohhh not again, this was already disussed in that old thread where you first posted your nice ASCII art. I don't want to go trough it all again.
> posted to c.l.l was a lengthy article titled "Why I can't use Lisp" > [1] which resulted in more than 70 follow-ups. You have since taken
Yes, I'm glad and happy for the insight I gained from that thread. As you can see, I'm still participating in this newsgroup, reading books about Lisp and becoming impressed about it's power etc...
> part in a couple of c.l.l threads so one can assume that you should > know what's there and what's not. Don't tell me you've never heard of > CLiki or you are too dumb to find the FAQ or search Google.
No I'm not, and I'm also not too dumb to use the newsgroup. The fact is I couldn't find what I wanted(AFAIK it doesn't exist until today) so I asked in the Newsgroup, whats wrong with that?
> Now, in March 2003 you suddenly post an article where you ask about a > "free" CL implementation for Windows and Linux which can access MySQL > and Java. Wait a minute - weren't you the one who told us that such a > thing doesn't exist just a few months earlier. Let me quote:
Ohhh, I can't believe that. Obviously after that old thread from few months ago I had long changed my mind. I was still interested in Lisp(and I'm still interested), or do you think I have fun wasting my time posting here on google? I have more to do, believe me.
> If that's not a troll I've never seen one.
At that time I was still trying to introduce Lisp in my job. I needed a Lisp that could work with MySql and Java. Couldn't find one. Well, if you call that a troll what can I say?
Please consider that there are a lot of people that search the google archives before posting(I have done it a lot and collected tons of useful knowledge from several newsgroups). Go to Google groups now and type in the following search terms(without quotes):"lisp mysql database" Guess what, the first thread to appear will be the one that I started, the sad thing is that the searcher will have to read mostly flames. Wouldn't it have been better if everyone just tried to contribute useful information, remember: the Newsgroup is not email, it should be useful to everybody, not only the original poster.
Jock Cooper <jo...@mail.com> wrote in message <news:m31xuovb8l.fsf@jcooper02.sagepub.com>... > people getting cancer from smoking. But it is still this indirect > experience which allows you to make a conclusion.
Did you consider this article of mine to be ironical? I was just expressing my honest thanks. Maybe it is a misunderstanding? (Yes, I was still complaining about the signal to noise ratio, but not regarding my parent): http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=...
You took your time to post a non-technical article in this thread, may I ask for an additional few minutes for a technical one?
...I am discussing the possibility of making a simpler implementation of CL.
But I have not forgotten ISLISP, which is one specification you know pretty well(probably you did it), you even implemented it in CL. Now the technical question would be:
How does the time for implementing/porting a CL compare to ISLISP? The same question for size of implementation.
I was at the page of the only commercial implementor and it says it was ported to more than 60 architectures, which is quite impressing.
Maybe it's better to answer this question to the other thread: "Designing the next Lisp: draft 1 ", so everyone can find it.
