
Ask HN: Lisp and the Personal Computer Revolution - Kinnard
What impact did Lisp have on the Personal Computer Revolution?<p>I&#x27;m particularly wondering what, if any, the interplay with Apple Computer was.
======
jonjacky
You might find the computer hobbyist magazine BYTE special issue on Lisp from
August 1979 vol 4 no 8 to be interesting. It is linked here, with lots of
discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15033439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15033439)

I don't recall much influence from Lisp on personal computing in its early
days (late 70s early 80s). There were Lisp interpreters available for some of
the popular computers but they couldn't do much besides pedagogical exercises
like in The Little Schemer (which I think hadn't appeared yet) - I recall one
system only supported about 1600 CONS cells.

I recall Pascal was much more influential with Apple users. There was a whole
operating system UCSD Pascal which was somewhat popular in the late 1970s that
ran on Apple II.

~~~
Kinnard
Thank you!!!

------
taylodl
The only impact I'm aware of Lisp having was on Zork - which was all the rage
in the early 80s. Assembly, Basic and Pascal were the predominant languages of
that era.

------
lispm
I made years ago a presentation about Lisp on the Mac:

[http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~ferguson/Lisp%20Docs/lisp-and-
ma...](http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~ferguson/Lisp%20Docs/lisp-and-macosx.pdf)

Generally the influence of Lisp on Apple was starting in the mid 80s. There
were Lisps available for the Apple II, but they did not have much impact.

But a few highlights from the mid 80s on:

Coral developed a Lisp for the Macintosh. See for example:

[http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...](http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2013/2/17_Macintosh_Common_Lisp.html)

and

[https://ccl.clozure.com/history.html](https://ccl.clozure.com/history.html)

Coral Lisp was developed into a Common Lisp and marketed under the name
'Macintosh Allegro Common Lisp' (MACL).

At some point MACL was bought by Apple. Why did Apple buy it? Well MCL was
becoming popular at Apple and specifically at their research lab called the
'Advanced Technology Group' (ATG). A lot of ATG projects were Lisp-based. Lisp
was used to develop a multimedia development tool called Sk8 (which was used
in probably hundred projects with universities) - Sk8 had a scripting language
called Sk8script, which was the model for AppleScript. So Apple used MCL for a
bunch of research and production applications.

But the biggest reason for buying MCL and its development team was that Apple
at that time was working a portable computers: tablet computers and small
PDAs. Apple was developing a new Lisp dialect for that (Ralph, later renamed
to Dylan) and had written an OS for and with it. The development environment
was MCL and the later target were ARM-based tablets and PDAs running Dylan.
For some reason (like not enough RAM on the production models) it was decided
to write a new OS in C++ and Newtonscript - and another small group worked on
a Lisp/Dylan based OS.

Apple later published a Technology Preview of their Dylan system for the Mac.

The first NewtonScript IDE was also written in Lisp. The production version
was then written in C++. This was sometimes a strategy: write a prototype
application in Lisp (with Mac UI) and then rewrite it in C++ for publication.

One of the main technologists at Apple was Larry Tesler (who came from Xerox)
and he was a big user/promoter of Lisp technology at Apple - and he was
responsible for the Newton project at some point.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler)

One of the ideas for further research was the Knowledge Navigator:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1goCh3Qd7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1goCh3Qd7M)

Larry has written about Lisp at Apple: [http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-
dylan/book.annotated/foreword.ht...](http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-
dylan/book.annotated/foreword.html)

See also why Lisp was thought as a good base for their application/systems
development for PDAs and even the Mac:

[http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-
dylan/book.annotated/preface.htm...](http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-
dylan/book.annotated/preface.html)

Apple also collaborated with Lisp Machine companies like Symbolics and TI.
They developed Lisp processor boards for the Mac II and made it possible to
run a separate Lisp OS in a Mac II. Symbolics for example also made a promo
video for Apple and they used a bunch of Macs with their Lisp boards + their
graphics software for it.

One of the most important influences came a bit later. A french developer had
written the first interactive user interface designer - called SOS Interface -
he used LeLisp on a Mac for that. This UI designer was later ported to other
Lisps on the Mac and even to Lisp Machines running in a Mac II. At one point
Steve Jobs got a demo of this interface designer. He hired the developer (JM
Hullot) and it was rewritten as the Interface Designer for NeXT and later Mac
OS X. The Interface Designer was one of the most important development tools
and maybe still is - it is still a part of XCode.

Lisp at Apple mostly died when Steve Jobs closed the ATG group. He also closed
the Newton group. The most important reasons were focussing on the Mac and
cost cutting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Advanced_Technology_Grou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Advanced_Technology_Group)

~~~
Kinnard
Wow, thank you for the extremely thorough answer!

