RE: member returns list

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> But basically, he started GNU emacs and designing emacs lisp slightly
> beforem the CL standardization process started, and it was far from
> obviouos that it would succeed (it took ten years!).

Hm...  Dunno when you want to say that RMS "started" designing
Emacs Lisp.  But I think I disagree with what I think you are
saying about when "the CL standardization process started".

The first public release of GNU Emacs was in 1985.  Common
Lisp was designed over a period of years prior to that, and RMS
was at least somewhat involved with that design process (he was
well aware of it, to say the least).

Common Lisp was defined by 1984.  The book that specified its
definition, Common Lisp the Language, was published in 1984
(I'm looking at my 1984 copy now), and it is quite clear from
that book that the language design that it presents (specifies,
in detail) was agreed upon by all of the design participants.
It is a thoroughgoing specification of the language, and as
such it was used as the guide when implementing CL here and
there.

Was that a "standard".  I would say so.  It was a full
definition, and it thus allowed people to go out and develop
implementations.  Whether it was a "standard" blessed by this
or that standards body is a moot point, IMO.

And there were already working implementations of Common Lisp
in 1984.  It was being used by programmers in various labs in
1984.  And new Common Lisp implementations were fast underway
in 1984 (e.g. for new Lisp machines).

I was using Kyoto Common Lisp in 1984, for instance.  It was not
a great implementation at that point, but it was usable.  It was
developed just on the basis of studying the spec (CLtL).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Common_Lisp

Not only was Common Lisp defined by 1984, it was even already
criticized  in a paper in the 1984 Symposium on Lisp and
Functional Programming, "Critique of Common Lisp".

See The Evolution of Lisp, http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/Hopl2.pdf

From another recent thread here ("print out all members of a list"):

>>>> How is that possible, since Emacs Lisp came out AFTER Scheme and Common 
>>>> Lisp?  CLtL was published in 1984, the same year Stallman started 
>>>> writing GNU Emacs?  And Scheme is older, since CL took a number of ideas 
>>>> from it (most notably lexical scoping).
>>> 
>>> At the same time as CL.  
>>> The CL standard was completed in 1994.   1984 only marks the beginning
>>> of the standardization effort.

I disagree with that characterization.  The fact that Common Lisp
continued to be refined as a standard, and the fact that CLOS and
ANSI Common Lisp came later, does not mean that CL had not already
been defined by 1984.

> For example, Franz, Inc. switched over to CL only after 1985
> and had CL available only in 1986.

Franz Lisp was widely distributed and mature, while CL had few
implementations at that point.  Eventually Franz Inc. was formed
and it produced its own implementation of Common Lisp.

But the fact that Franz Inc. did not have a CL in 1984 does not
mean that CL had not been designed by then, let alone that it
was not defined until 1994!  Other CL implementations existed
in 1984, and still others were in the process of development.

This development was all happening (rapidly) because CL had
already been designed, as a standard.  The mere fact that
Franz Inc. could and would set out to implement its own CL
after 1984 underlines the fact that CL had already been
defined by then.

> http://franz.com/about/company.history.lhtml
> http://emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsHistory