ComputerWorld mentions of Interlisp

Bill Stumbo

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Jan 25, 2025, 9:25:08 AMJan 25

to Interlisp core

John Cowan

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Jan 25, 2025, 3:44:55 PMJan 25

to Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:25 AM Bill Stumbo <wst...@charter.net> wrote:

> Users praise Gold Hill's micro-based Common Lisp, mentions Interlisp.

I wrote code in Golden CL under MS-DOS, and played around with Gold Hill's frames and forward/backward chaining layered products. The CL depended on 286 or 386 hardware. Early versions used dynamic rather than proper CL static binding. I think there was OS/2 support as well.

Symbolics Ad. It supports Interlisp.

I don't think it did.

Alternatives to Cobol: ADA, mentions Ada being similar to Interlisp.

Not really. What was meant was that Ada was going to be an environment, not that the languages were similar. As things turned out, Ada was compiled in the ordinary way.

Paolo Amoroso

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Jan 25, 2025, 4:42:23 PMJan 25

to Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

Really great find, thanks.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 3:25 PM Bill Stumbo <wst...@charter.net> wrote:

Symbolics Ad. It supports Interlisp.
https://archive.org/details/sim_computerworld_1983-06-27_17_26/page/n41/mode/2up?q=interlisp

Kent Pitman posted some comments on this feature.

--

Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon

Arun Welch

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Jan 25, 2025, 4:45:19 PMJan 25

to John Cowan, Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

Since it ran Fortran I guess you could get to Interlisp via LISPF4, the Interlisp interpreter written by Mats Nordstrom that Blake McBride now supports :-).

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Arun Welch

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Jan 26, 2025, 11:22:46 AMJan 26

to John Cowan, Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

The gent who supported the system at Symbolics popped up in the thread on Mastodon. Apparently they took a similar approach to CL in Interlisp, using packages and read tables. It was done primarily at BBN’s request. Implemented the bare minimum required for their application to run. All Interlisp code lived in its own package, sort of like our own IL: package. No UI, only core language.

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Arun Welch

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Jan 26, 2025, 11:24:21 AMJan 26

to John Cowan, Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

And this is a paper describing a system that used it, Steamer. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1609/aimag.v5i2.434

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Paolo Amoroso

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Jan 26, 2025, 11:51:44 AMJan 26

to Medley Interlisp core

On Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 5:22:46 PM UTC+1 Arun Welch wrote:

The gent who supported the system at Symbolics popped up in the thread on Mastodon. Apparently they took a similar approach to CL in Interlisp, using packages and read tables. It was done primarily at BBN’s request. Implemented the bare minimum required for their application to run. All Interlisp code lived in its own package, sort of like our own IL: package. No UI, only core language.

This is his post https://mathstodon.xyz/@weekend_editor/113895472392932746

Larry Masinter

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Jan 26, 2025, 12:12:15 PMJan 26

to Arun Welch, John Cowan, Bill Stumbo, Interlisp core

Symbolics used parts of the Interlisp-D implementation in their implementation of "Interlisp" for Symbolics systems. I remember seeing some Symbolics source code with "(* lmm: <date>)" initials comments in it, although I don't remember the context. I wonder if the emphasis on COPYRIGHT feature was a result?