Re: member returns list

[Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>]

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:

> "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
>
>> Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:
>>
>>> "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>
>>> writes:
>>>
>>>> Because each implementation worked on a different
>>>> machine with a different OS (if an OS was available
>>>> at all).
>>>
>>> Yeah, but there were many machines at the time of the
>>> "crazy language" C as well, still, there aren't
>>> a plethora of C dialects. (If you don't count all the
>>> epigone languages that borrowed heavily the syntax
>>> of C.)
>>>
>>> But C is famous for its portability (which also
>>> proliferated Unix) - perhaps the exception that
>>> confirms the rule, that Lisp is cooler than C?
>>
>> It's not exactly the same time period, and not the same kind of
>> machines.
>>
>> Basically, C was running on small machines, that were all the same.
>> After C the micro-processors appeared, and since they were so bad, they
>> soon were optimized to run C code efficiently.

I don't really agree with Pascal's view.

Anyway, there were some other reasons why Lisp implementations differed
between machines.  As Pascal said, the early Lisp implementations were
on mainframes.  Later on people tried to port Lisp to minicomputers and
microcomputers.  But, Lisp was already quite complex and it wasn't
possible to fit all the features.  So, some of the features got
excluded, and which were excluded varied.

Pascal criticizes early micro-processors for being bad.  But, to those
who used them it was often a choice of micro-processor or no processors
at all.  In that situation compile-only languages with a strong emphasis
on efficiency (such as C) were the natural choice.  We're all in a
different situation now.

BR,
Robert Thorpe