Notices by Vassil Nikolov (vnikolov@ieji.de)

[Origins of LOOP in #CommonLisp?]

@amszmidt

Thank you.

@kentpitman

Kent, would you happen to have anything on the authorship of the `loop' macro within easy reach?

@screwlisp

@screwlisp @oantolin

> This one was my attempt to demonstrate series useage.

For what it's worth, that had been exactly how I had understood it from the beginning.

As to how historic or historical each of the above-mentioned is, I'm not the judge of that 🙂.

@screwlisp @oantolin

> I guess the big lisp360 loop at the front alienates half the people, and the series::install alienates the other half ;p

And the third half view it in a rational way 🙂.

Just a coincidence, but I think you might trademark "lisp360" or "L/360" as a hybrid of lisp machine and S/360 🙂.

[#Lisp history.]

@screwlisp @oantolin

> I interviewed Masinter who clarified that common lisp's loop was more or less the one he wrote for lisp360

It seems to me we might be thinking here of the Lisp Machine and then of Symbolics 3600.

By the way, I had the impression that JonL wrote the `loop' macro, but by all means check that.

@screwlisp @oantolin

> I was meaning to go back and transcribe that interview anyway.

That would definitely be a Good Thing.

@screwtape

> cl-series generates native common lisp code by working at macro expansion time

That is, at compile time.
And even more significantly than native, it's _iteratively efficient_ in many important cases.

It seems a pity that Series didn't make it into the standard (yes, there were reasons for that).
Almost made it (made it to one of the two appendices of CLtL2, the second edition of Steele's book).

#CommonLisp

@brouhaha @AmenZwa @larsbrinkhoff @amszmidt @dimpase @trofi

brouhaha@mastodon.social> The PDP-10 most certainly DOES have addressable bytes. That's the subject of section 2.3 of the System Reference Manual.

I'm just a little bit curious about your definition of _addressable byte_.

@AmenZwa @larsbrinkhoff @brouhaha @amszmidt @dimpase @trofi
PDP-10 doesn't have addressable bytes.

@amszmidt The 1980s are a decade in which numerous discussion were already taking place on what emacs (in the generic sense) is or isn't (some of them fairy heated).
They may have started even before 1980 and they continued after 1989, of course.
I am sure enough samples are easy to find in various archives and I am sure many of them are still worth reading.

@amszmidt That is neither the meaning of 'this "discourse"' nor of '1980s'.

@amszmidt
Most importantly, the statement "Emacs is a virtual lisp machine" is metaphorical more than it is technical.
And then "Emacs" unqualified means GNU Emacs by default.
But this "discourse" has been conducted (and recorded for the proverbial diligent reader 🙂) very extensively since about the 1980s.

@Zenie @oantolin @amszmidt
Indeed.
It is worth repeating what has long been pointed out: Emacs is _a virtual lisp machine_ with diverse capabilities, including (but emphatically not limited to) very extended editing capabilities.
It is priceless to have the confidence and the ability to automate operations unforeseen by the creators of Emacs.