
Let’s LISP like it’s 1959 [video] - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGY3uBHVVr4
======
KineticLensman
I'm currently working through the implementation of my own personal Lisp,
following the awesome MAL process [0]. It's instructive to compare the result
with the language as defined in the early 60s and available to programmers
then (e.g. as defined by the Lisp manual referenced in the video). One thing
that immediately stood out was the use of GOTO ('GO' actually) in the early
Lisp rather than some sort of loop or tail recursion.

Incidentally, I've been wondering what app I should write to test my Lisp. The
obvious end-state mentioned in the MAL guide is to self-host a Lisp, but I'm
thinking it would be more appropriate (and fun) to re-implement one of the
early chatbots like ELIZA [1].

[0]
[https://github.com/kanaka/mal/blob/master/process/guide.md](https://github.com/kanaka/mal/blob/master/process/guide.md)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA)

~~~
gekkonier
I would consider writing a small standardlib for your lisp. While writing it
you will encounter things you can optimize perhaps.

~~~
KineticLensman
Cool! That is a great offer. If you watch my progress SITREPs at [0] you'll
get a feel for when it might ready. I'm behind on the SITREP updates but I'm
in fact just debugging macro expansion (step 8) at the moment.

[0] [https://www.non-kinetic-
effects.co.uk/blog/2019/01/21/MAL-2](https://www.non-kinetic-
effects.co.uk/blog/2019/01/21/MAL-2)

~~~
nikofeyn
i read his comment as “[if i were you] i would consider...”.

~~~
gekkonier
Yes, I'm sorry. It was meant as an answer to 'Incidentally, I've been
wondering what app I should write to test my Lisp.'

~~~
KineticLensman
My bad! And I can't even claim not to be a native-English speaker.

It is a good idea and in fact I'm already sort of going down that route. I'm
finding that using macros to define new functionality (rather than extend the
core set of built-in functions) is a good way to tease out implementation
issues as they somewhat stress the underlying mechanisms.

I think my first lib functions will be IO-related.

------
wooby
If you're interested, it's also possible to run the actual original Lisp 1.5
on emulated hardware via SIMH.

See this page:
[http://web.sonoma.edu/users/l/luvisi/](http://web.sonoma.edu/users/l/luvisi/)

I got it running on my Mac a few months ago. SIMH is on Homebrew.

------
qntty
Code on github: [https://github.com/krig/LISP](https://github.com/krig/LISP)

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akuji1993
Let's LISP again, like we did last summer!

~~~
tjr
The things we Lisped last summer, we'll remember AI winter long?

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
he is making a Lisp, he is checking it twice ...

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globolglo
this was an excellent history lesson on multiple levels. The final personal
remarks about how the speaker connects the ethos of open source to his family
history was an unexpected turn.

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Wyndtroy2012
Anyone that likes Lisp should take a look at Factor. Even simpler syntax (RPN
instead of prefix, less parenthesis), Lispy generics, functional, procedural,
scripting, arbitrary data literals, full of meta goodness, clean good small
understandable library, batteries included, sub-languages, REPL + image +
source files, low and high level. Inspired in Lisp, Joy, Smalltalk and Forth
(and with some things in common with Rebol).

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leoc
Is Steve Russell still on hand to demonstrate the PDP-1 at the Computer
History Museum in Mountain View from time to time?

~~~
enf
He and Peter Samson gave the Spacewar demo last August 4th, on the Vintage
Computer Festival day.

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reikonomusha
If you’re interested in hacking on some modern Common Lisp code, Rigetti
Computing (which sells access to quantum computers) open-sourced their SDK,
which includes a high-performance quantum simulator called the QVM [1] and an
optimizing compiler quilc [2] for their quantum programming language called
Quil. All of it is written in CL.

[1] [https://github.com/rigetti/qvm](https://github.com/rigetti/qvm)

[2] [https://github.com/rigetti/quilc](https://github.com/rigetti/quilc)

~~~
yvdriess
There seems to be some attraction to CL for QC researchers. I also used CL for
my PhD's QC compiler and VM. Although my low-lv QVM was written in C, it takes
s-expr input. I'm a bit sad it wasn't cited by the Quil guys :p

[https://github.com/yvdriess/mcc](https://github.com/yvdriess/mcc)

[https://github.com/yvdriess/qvm](https://github.com/yvdriess/qvm)

