
Common Lisp vs. Smalltalk - berserker-one
https://medium.com/p/common-lisp-vs-smalltalk-b089e1405a3b
======
lispm
> "Smalltalk is famous for its amazing “live coding and debugging” IDE/runtime
> environment"

Which Smalltalk got the basics from Lisp anyway, like the image-based
development, in-core editing, interactive debugging, ... Core implementors
came from PDP-1 LISP (implemented by L Peter Deutsch in 1962, who implemented
much of the low-level of Smalltalk) and then BBN Lisp.

[http://www.codersatwork.com/l-peter-
deutsch.html](http://www.codersatwork.com/l-peter-deutsch.html)

"Deutsch moved to Xerox PARC, where he worked on the Interlisp system and on
the Smalltalk virtual machine, helping to invent the technique of just-in-time
compilation."

Here a Interlisp manual from 1972: [http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-
stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/tenex/T...](http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-
stuttgart.de/pdf/bbn/tenex/TenexLispRef_Aug72.pdf)

BBN Lisp was then developed as Interlisp at Xerox PARC, side by side with
Smalltalk. Interlisp-D then run on the same hardware as the Smalltalk system,
but as its own OS/IDE/Window system...

[http://larrymasinter.net/interlisp-
ieee.pdf](http://larrymasinter.net/interlisp-ieee.pdf)

~~~
berserker-one
Yes, but who remembers Lisp? Whenever anybody mentions live coding and
debugging, they immediately think of Smalltalk. Why? Because Smalltalk's
implementation is memorable. Smalltalk's implementation is elegant. Lisp has
always been rather clunky.

~~~
lispm
> Yes, but who remembers Lisp?

Some.

> Whenever anybody mentions live coding and debugging, they immediately think
> of Smalltalk.

Funky, I think first of the read-eval-print-loop of Lisp, which enabled live
programming around 1960 until today.

Very elegant.

------
SteveLAnderson
TL;DR - the writer dismisses common lisp because he can't be bothered to learn
emacs.

