Re: acronymania (was: Re: Real-life examples of lexical binding in Emacs Lisp)

[Rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com>]

On Friday, June 19, 2015 at 11:04:53 PM UTC+5:30, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Udyant Wig  writes:
> 
> >> I use "LISP" in the context of the history and
> >> origin of the technology but I don't have a defined
> >> endpoint at what time history gives way to your
> >> everyday "Lisp".
> >
> > It seems to have been a byproduct of the general
> > attitude that also made "UNIX" "Unix", "COBOL"
> > "Cobol", "FORTH" "Forth", "EMACS" "Emacs", etc.
> 
> UNIX, despite being uppercased, isn't an acronym but
> a pun/poke on Multics - which by the was *is* an
> acronym:
> 
>     Multiplexed Information and Computing Service
> 
> Only "Multi" should be put within quotation marks as
> that part never worked out, which is where the
> fun begins.
> 
> With UNIX/Unix the distinction is clearer (?) than
> with LISP/Lisp as UNIX is the trademark that is
> awarded/sold to (at that point) official
> implementations - and Unix is everything else.
> 
> I consider GNU/Linux to be Unix tho some people insist
> it is UN*X, *nix, Unix-like, and so on. Hey, GNU is
> not Unix but that's exactly what it is. The "x" in
> Linux is a UNIX "x". The instigation to do Linux was
> in order to be able to use the university SunOS UNIX,
> only at home. It is Unix!
> 
> COBOL is an acronym: Common Business-Oriented Language
> and like EMACS (acronym/abbreviation of
> "Editor MACroS") they have turned into names by now -
> simple as that, I suppose.
> 
> FORTH isn't an acronym so one might as well make it
> a name with no regrets. All of those I would use as
> capitalized names, except for perhaps in some
> historical contexts - and to be sure, I never speak of
> Cobol and so Forth.

Curiously, I wrote a blog-post recently on a functional programming timeline
http://blog.languager.org/2015/04/cs-history-1.html
in which I mentioned tangentially about the culture of lowercase starting with Unix.

Someone felt strongly enough about the inaccuracies in this that he wrote me
some longer-than-my-post emails about this.
Since this has interesting historical titbits itself (and is too long for 
blogger's comments) its here:
http://blog.languager.org/2015/06/richard-okeefes-responses-to-fp-timeline.html