[Info-vax] Lisp alternatives for Emacs [was Re: Python for x86?]

[Rich Alderson]

=?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:

> On 4/21/2023 1:09 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

>> On 2023-04-21, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:

>>> On 4/21/2023 10:51 AM, Chris Townley wrote:

>>>> Is Lisp still used these days?

>> In Emacs. Unfortunately. :-(

>> What a bloody horrible monstrosity of a language. :-(

ITYM "what a wonderfully polymorphic language capable of expressing multiple
programming paradigms at once". ;-)

>> I wish they had used something else for Emacs. Anything else.

> I am sure a lot of people agree.

> But what were the alternatives when Emacs Lisp was created?

> Emacs Basic?

EMACS began life as a library of macros for the MIT AI Lab's dialect of TECO
for the PDP-10.  (TECO itself was written in MIDAS, a powerful macro assembler
that originated on the PDP-6.)  Initially, a real time editing feature was
added, and several hackers created small libraries of their own favorite
macros, then a hacker named Richard Stallman gathered up all those libraries,
eliminated duplicates and rationalized the implementation, and released the
result to the community.

EMACS was ported from the ITS operating system on their PDP-10s to TENEX
(ancestral to TOPS-20) by porting TECO there.

EMACS was also ported to Multics on the Honeywell 6180 processor at the MIT
Laboratory for Computer Science, but not by porting TECO.  Instead, the MACLISP
dialect of LISP, another creation of the AI Lab, had already been ported to
Multics, so that was used as the base language for the EMACS port.

Meanwhile, an editor with the capabilities of EMACS was desired for the Lisp
machines being created by the AI Lab, so taking their cue from the Multics port
two Lisp based editors, EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE
Initially"), were created.

By now, Stallman was interested in creating an unburdened operating system for
exotic hardware (like VAXes and SUNs), and needed an editor, so he ported the
underlying Lisp and established an Emacs on top.

There might have been alternatives, but why fuck with a good thing?

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news at alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen