
Corman Lisp sources are now available - lispm
http://lispblog.xach.com/post/107215169193/corman-lisp-sources-are-now-available
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jarcane
Awesome. Here's hoping someone can clean this up and get it building with
VS2013. It would be amazing to have a Windows-native free/OSS CL. Neither
Allegro or LW are truly free; their "free" tools have pretty limiting
restrictions on how they can be used, which mostly just leaves one with SBCL
and making do with libraries for anything Windows-based (of which I'm not even
sure there are many).

~~~
zachbeane
I think it's pretty unlikely that this will be made to work in a modern
environment in a useful way. I think the primary benefit will be historical
interest and possibly the reuse of some of the component parts.

[http://lispblog.xach.com/post/107215169193/corman-lisp-
sourc...](http://lispblog.xach.com/post/107215169193/corman-lisp-sources-are-
now-available) has some more context. I'd have posted it myself directly, but
xach.com is blacklisted from HN.

~~~
sctb
The ban on xach.com was removed a few weeks ago.

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jacquesm
Can we get the URL changed then please, the context really helps.

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dang
Sure. Done.

~~~
jacquesm
Thanks!

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doublec
There was a mailing list on Yahoo groups for Corman Lisp for those interested
in browsing the history. Most of the activity occurred 2001-2003:
[https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/cormanlisp/info](https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/cormanlisp/info)

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rurban
Fantastic. Thanks for doing this.

Esp. the compiler and FFI is super simple, much simpler than SBCL. I was one
of the few people who worked with it those times.

I feel Roger's pain with the MSVC changes over time. But I don't think porting
it to the newer compilers or mingw64-gcc would be that hard.

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vram22
Corman Lisp is good as a learning tool for Lisp. I had tried it out some, a
while earlier, and also corresponded with the creator, Roger Corman.
Interestingly, some time ago, he was looking for Lisp developers for a project
in Lisp.

~~~
zachbeane
It might have been at some point in the past, but it doesn't run on modern
systems, does not fully implement Common Lisp, and can't run much of the
useful software written in the past 10 or so years.

It's still pretty cool, but not as a learning tool in 2015.

~~~
vram22
I don't agree with your points.

1\. It ran for me on Windows 7 not too long back - a year or so ago, IIRC. 2\.
I did not say that it fully implements Common Lisp. I said is useful as a
learning tool - meaning for beginners to Lisp. This scenario is quite possible
and can make sense for beginners: install an easy-to-setup-and-start-using
tool like Corman Lisp; try learning _some_ of the basics of Lisp for some time
using such a tool; if you find that you understand it well enough, and are
interested enough to proceed further, THEN find a better/more
advanced/professional Lisp and start using it. In other words, gradual
learning curve, less investment of time (on installation/setup, etc.) at the
start, etc. All good reasons. 3\. A beginner is likely not going to want to
run "much of the useful software written in the past 10 years" \- or however
many years. A beginner is going to want to learn the basics of the language -
by definition.

And I was talking about beginners in my previous comment - hence used the term
"learning tool".

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zachbeane
I think anyone who wants to be able to stick with a system as they grow, get
supportive help from an active user base, reuse the work of others in the form
of useful libraries, and not worry about the viability and future of their
development environment should use something like LispWorks, Allegro CL,
Clozure CL, or SBCL. LispWorks and Allegro CL are just as easy to install and
use on Windows as Corman Lisp.

~~~
vram22
1\. That's exactly one of my points. I don't thing it is necessary for a user
to stick with one system as they grow. A user may prefer to start with a very
simple tool, use it for a while, then move on to a more powerful but somewhat
more complex tool. I guess it is a difference of opinion there.

2\. I had also tried out LispWorks and Allegro CL. It was a while ago, so
don't remember exact details, but IIRC, either or both of them was not so easy
to _use_ as Corman Lisp was - for beginners, mind you. Both were easy to
install though. Note: I am not criticizing those two products on grounds of
technical quality. I had read up a lot about Lisp in general, plus
specifically about various prominent companies and individuals in the field,
and the work that they had done, earlier, before trying out these tools, and
so I know that both of those companies are by very accomplished Lisp people.
It's just that I didn't find them that easy to use as a beginner to Lisp,
compared to Corman Lisp.

