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   Ramin Honary (ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 06:28:16 JST Ramin Honary

   • screwlisp

   @sacha @screwtape I had a little free time today, so I wrote an outline to keep our discussion on track during the recording of the podcast next week. It is on Codeberg, so send a pull request if you want to change anything.

   https://codeberg.org/ramin_hal9001/lisp-gopher-climate_chat-about-emacs/src/branch/main/show-outline.org

   • Embed this notice
     lispm (symbolics@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 06:28:12 JST lispm

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • masso

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @screwtape @sacha

     early Lisp on UNIX: Franz Lisp (80s).
     
     > Both the GNU project and Emacs had got started before Common Lisp was even standardized.

     Common Lisp was first defined 1981/82. CLtL was published in 1984.

     One of the first Common Lisp implementations was Kyoto CL from 1984. (-> AKCL -> GCL -> ECL).

     GNU Emacs was released in 1985, Originally based on Gosling Emacs sources.

     Common Lisps were running on various UNIX systems: SUNOS, Solaris, HP UX, AIX, IRIX...

   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 06:28:14 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • masso

     @ramin_hal9001 @sacha @masso

     a few weeks ago I did highlight that in Pike's infamous Software Research Is Irrelevant talk that the emacs-centric lisp machines prior to the 90s were not unix(-compatible) and were a casualty of unix in the same way Pike's plan9 was a casualty of unix.

     But then, Pike was complaining that in 2000, basically every programmer used emacs on unix and in 1990, basically every programmer also used emacs on unix so maybe there is a special link between emacs and unix.

   • Embed this notice
     Ramin Honary (ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 06:28:14 JST Ramin Honary

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • masso

     @screwtape @sacha @masso as far as I can tell, Emacs was one of the first Lisp implementations for Unix systems, and it was free to use, so it would have probably become pretty popular for that reason. Both the GNU project and Emacs had got started before Common Lisp was even standardized. In those days, Lisp was being implemented mostly on mainframes and minicomputers, on the Xerox Alto, and on bespoke hardware like in the case of Symbolics. But this was in parallel to development of Unix, and so Unix maybe wasn’t as widely used or popular enough at the time for anyone to bother porting Lisp to it until the 1980s after GNU started cloning Unix.

     So there may well have been other Lisp implementations on Unix or it’s clones, but I don’t know enough about pre-1980s Lisp. I don’t even know what computer Steele and Sussman used to implement the first Scheme.

     Anthk repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 06:28:15 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • masso

     @ramin_hal9001 @sacha

     oh I should actually say something. Thank-you for your thinking you two!

     Viz unix and emacs, do you remember that Japanese emacs lisp blogger 15 years ago writing that emacs was a key value source for the unix ecosystem because of the secret sword [if memory serves] of writing external programs whose primary interface are an emacs mode with the example of flycheck, which became popular outside of emacs @masso do you remember what I'm talking about or am I totally lost?

   • Embed this notice
     Anthk (anthk@paquita.masto.host)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 18:15:30 JST Anthk

     in reply to

     • screwlisp

     @screwtape @ramin_hal9001 @sacha

     GNU was always about giving power to the user. Linux as a kernel was just a convenience. With Hurd an user could mount disks and remote FS' without suid at all. And OFC a vehicle to run Emacs.

     Luciano Silva likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 29-Mar-2025 18:15:31 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     @ramin_hal9001 @sacha
     3/3 and needing to read more
     I wonder if GNU can be understood to have survived primarily as a vehicle for running emacs. GIMP is kind of the odd counterexample, though in hindsight, GIMP in 1997 was a libre copy of the then-more-central proprietary CLIM implementations but GIMP used tinyscheme instead of clim-lisp/common-lisp as its command language (button programming language, whatever gimp calls it) as its point of difference.

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:13:27 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @symbolics Not this trope again ... Rainer Joswig really loves to discredit the work of MIT hackers in anyway possible.

     GNU Emacs was not a "rewrite of Gosling Emacs".

     EMACS was started by RMS, not GLS -- we even have a date of that, and the original email (11/16/76 22:05:41).

     EMACS was and is based on the work of many people.

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @screwtape @AmenZwa @sacha

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     lispm (symbolics@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:13:28 JST lispm

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @screwtape @AmenZwa @sacha Sure the TECO EMACS (started by Guy L Steele, btw., using TECO macros) was the first. But the implementation is internally mostly unrelated to GNU Emacs, (C + Emacs Lisp) which was a rewrite of Gosling Emacs (C + Mocklisp). The earliest EMACS variants with Lisp had no Emacs Lisp dialect as extension language, but were fully implemented in Lisp Machine Lisp (EINE by Dan Weinreb) or Maclisp (-> Greenberg). CMU wrote an EMACS in Spice Lisp.

   • Embed this notice
     Ramin Honary (ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:13:30 JST Ramin Honary

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso
     • lispm

     early Lisp on UNIX: Franz Lisp (80s).

     @symbolics I suspected that Franz may have been ported to Unix eraly-on, but I had a hard time finding evidence of it, so thanks for confirming that!

     Most people consider Stallman’s Emacs to be the origin of Emacs back in 1976-ish based on the TECO editor, even though the Emacs of that era would probably be unrecognizable to us nowadays. Greenberg wrote Emacs in MacLisp in 1978, and so I think that was the first Emacs Lisp, but this was running on ITS, not Unix.

     I understand that Emacs already had quite a following by the time Gosling Emacs was officially released in 1984, and Stallman’s GNU Emacs v15 released in 1985 saw wide-spread distribution as a result.

     • https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsHistory

     So I guess Franz was indeed probably the first Lisp to run on Unix.

     @AmenZwa @masso @screwtape @sacha

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     amen zwa, esq. (amenzwa@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:13:31 JST amen zwa, esq.

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • masso
     • lispm

     @symbolics @ramin_hal9001 @masso @screwtape @sacha

     Franz LISP in Emacs via a VT100 on a VAX-11/780 running 4.2BSD 💕

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:14:40 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • masso

     @symbolics "GNU Emacs was released in 1985, Originally based on Gosling Emacs sources." This is absurdly false to the point of a lie.

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @screwtape @sacha

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:22:14 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @screwtape It is a simplifcation. GLS started coordinating a bunch of TECO macros, calling them ?MACS.

     EMACS / E where created (as in the binary) by RMS based on those macros.

     And all hackers followed hacking on them in that form. GLS or Weinreb wrote a detailed history of those events. GLS even credits RMS as the responsible for the overall success of Emacs.

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

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     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:22:15 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • amen zwa, esq.
     • Alfred M. Szmidt
     • masso

     @amszmidt
     https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/efaq.html#Origin-of-the-term-Emacs
     (GNU says emacs was a project started by steele and completed by rms)
     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

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     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:34:21 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • amen zwa, esq.
     • Alfred M. Szmidt
     • masso

     @amszmidt
     ah yeah, thanks for the summarised statement of events.
     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:34:21 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @screwtape Here is the specific email, and idea to the name (my original date is wrong, but whatever). Since the file was called ?MACS .. it also got renamed to EMACS.

     RMS@MIT-AI 11/10/76 21:46:03
     To: EAK at MIT-AI, CBF at MIT-AI, GLS at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI
     To: DLW at MIT-AI, MOON at MIT-AI
     Unless anyone can think of a better idea, I think we should
     rename ? to E.

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:39:23 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @screwtape You wouldn't be the first.

     DLW@MIT-AI 11/10/76 21:49:07
     To: MOON ay MIT-AI, DLW at MIT-AI, ED at MIT-AI, GLS at MIT-AI
     To: CBF at MIT-AI, EAK at MIT-AI, RMS at MIT-AI
     Another idea is to call it formally “QMARK” with a link
     existing for “QM” .

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

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     screwlisp (screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:39:24 JST screwlisp

     in reply to

     • amen zwa, esq.
     • Alfred M. Szmidt
     • masso

     @amszmidt
     I want to read the original name ?MACS as questionmarks, but this is probably how rumors get started
     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha

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     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 17:44:11 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • screwlisp
     • amen zwa, esq.
     • masso

     @screwtape Rainer loves to be so very picky when it suites him. Like absurdly calling GNU Emacs a "rewrite", but then refuses to acknowledge actual facts of events.

     It is quite boring by now ...

     @ramin_hal9001 @masso @AmenZwa @sacha