It's Hip to be Square

[pixel...@gmail.com]

So doing some coffee break research I found out that a few famous Lispers were into square dancing with various clubs.

John Sybalsky was a very capable "caller".

Guy Steele Jr. giving a lecture on the Musical and Mathmatical Design of Square Dance Singing Calls. It's interesting, Steele frames the dance as a programming exercise. 

Anyone else ever get in on that?
I've not done it since elementary school gym class - it was fun at the time.

- Ryan

[Arun Welch]

Yes, calling was a big part of John’s life, I think he got hooked at MIT. He did have some Lisp code to help him with building sequences. He talked me into going to one of his club sessions when I was out on one of my visits but TBH my skills were definitely not close to the level they were dancing at. It looks like Bill van Melle is still involved with the clubs John was calling with.

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[Herb Jellinek]

John's car bore the license plate

I CALL C4

- Herb

[Michele Denber]

On 6/20/2026 9:20 PM, pixel...@gmail.com wrote:

So doing some coffee break research I found out that a few famous Lispers were into square dancing with various clubs.

John Sybalsky was a very capable "caller".

Guy Steele Jr. giving a lecture on the Musical and Mathmatical Design of Square Dance Singing Calls. It's interesting, Steele frames the dance as a programming exercise. 

Anyone else ever get in on that?

I went to some of John's dances when I was in California.  They were great and I had a lot of fun.  I'm primarily a contra dancer though but that has a lot in common with square dancing.  The Bay area is blessed with multiple square and contra dances, from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, Oakland, and Palo Alto.  Gosh I miss all that.

            - Michele

[Ron Kaplan]

There is a vestige of this still in Medley:  John created the Dancer font so that he could diagram the calling sequences.

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[pixel...@gmail.com]

Some interesting insights!

I wonder if some of the software is still around?
Seems like Medley was a personal tool as much as scientific one.

- Ryan

[Michele Denber]

On 6/21/2026 7:02 PM, pixel...@gmail.com wrote:
> Some interesting insights!
>
> I wonder if some of the software is still around?
> Seems like Medley was a personal tool as much as scientific one.

Interlisp-D was an everything tool.  Since it took over the whole
machine, people added stuff to it.  TEdit was a text editor better than
Bravo.  Lafite gave us email.  I connected a Hayes modem to my D0  and
wrote a phone dialer program to call people in my contact list with one
click.  I also wrote the Calendar program.  Lisp's rich graphics
facilities made it easy to whip up a GUI for just about anything - much
easier than wrestling with BCPL or Mesa.

            - Michele

[Paolo Amoroso]

Square dance and Lisp are all over the fediverse. It turns out square dance was a thing at MIT/MACLISP too.

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Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon