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Questions tagged [lisp]

For questions regarding the LISP (List Processing) computer language, as implemented on retrocomputers.

3 votes
0 answers
183 views

What books did Symbolics Press publish?

Object-Oriented Programming in COMMON LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS by Sonya E. Keene is a well known CLOS book published in 1989 by Symbolics Press (ISBN-10: 0201175894; ISBN-13: 978-0201175899),...
Paolo Amoroso's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
2k views

Ada and its candidate languages

If one considers the languages which were considered as a basis for Ada, as listed in the "Report to the High Order Language Working Group" at e.g. http://bernd-oppolzer.de/DoD-Language-...
Mark Morgan Lloyd's user avatar
29 votes
4 answers
5k views

Why was the "Space-cadet keyboard" called that?

Many of us have heard of the so-called "Space-cadet keyboard" from 1978 (famous for including a mind-boggling number of modifier keys including control, meta, hyper, super, shift, top, front,...
Robert Columbia's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
335 views

When was let introduced to Lisp?

Similar to When was DEFUN added to Lisp? when was let introduced? It seems like a fundamental feature but unless I missed something even maclisp didn't contain it.
chx's user avatar
  • 1,041
12 votes
2 answers
4k views

Was 36-bits needed for LISP?

Came across a curious claim today about the PDP-6: First, 36 bits was the standard for scientific computing. This extended word length also accommodated LISP, a new language developed for work in ...
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

When was DEFUN added to Lisp?

I don't see DEFUN in a ~1966 copy of PDP-6 LISP. I do see it in a 1972 Maclisp. AI memo 116A from 1967 doesn't have DEFUN. (It does have MACRO.)
Lars Brinkhoff's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
692 views

What's the easiest way to bring up a MACLISP REPL on modern machines?

I'd like to bring up an old (pre-1975) LISP REPL so I can type things in and see how it behaves. MACLISP would be good but I'm open to other, similar LISPs, even as far back as LISP 1.5. What's the ...
cjs's user avatar
  • 27k
11 votes
1 answer
3k views

What was the first Lisp implementation that could generate machine code?

LISP is considered by some to be primarily an interpreted language, but compilers have been made for it. What was the first compiler? To be clear, this is about compilers that compile LISP code stored ...
cjs's user avatar
  • 27k
21 votes
3 answers
4k views

What LISP compilers and interpreters were available for 8-bit machines?

What LISP or LISP-like language compilers and interpreters were available for 8-bit microcomputers? Criteria for "8-bit" include that it should certainly run and execute non-trivial programs given no ...
cjs's user avatar
  • 27k
7 votes
2 answers
1k views

When did Lisp start using symbols for arithmetic?

Looking through the August 1979 issue of Byte magazine, it discusses a dialect of Lisp in which arithmetic operations are denoted by words like PLUS and TIMES. Later dialects like Common Lisp and ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 63.1k
8 votes
0 answers
262 views

A learning gomoku in Lisp

Years ago I played a version of gomoku that was written in Lisp that learned as you played. After a few rounds, it became nearly unbeatable. This was on Unix System III on a small PDP-11. I have ...
Dennis Williamson's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
1k views

How were Lisps usually implemented on architectures that has no stack or very small stacks?

I am thinking about architectures like the 6502 (the stack is limited to 256 bytes -- hardly enough to evaluate any reasonably sized Lisp expression) or the PDP-7 and PDP-8, which stored the return ...
Omar and Lorraine's user avatar