Subject: Re: Core Lisp (was Re: cautios question (about languages))
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/07/29
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3142236838820710@naggum.no>

* Tim Bradshaw <tfb@tfeb.org>
| I realised another thing about this.  CL, as it stands, is probably
| marginal on small devices -- a palm pilot for instance will probably only
| just run something like a small CL system.  So, superficially, it looks
| like a sensible thing to produce a shrunken CL with less functionality.
| But in the year or so it takes to design that, the memory available on
| all these tiny devices has doubled, so the old, bloated, CL would have
| fit.  So, really, I don't see an argument for a core CL based around a
| requirement for small devices.

  a handheld computer with Common Lisp would need an editor that would be a
  little different from what we're used to.  perhaps it doesn't make much
  sense to deal with textual input and then reading it the normal way?  the
  discussion about context-sensitive structure editors may be more useful
  when dealing with handhelds than with keyboard-based computers.  in other
  words, the complexity of reading input may be significantly reduced in
  one end, while we pay for the interface on the other end.  I don't see
  the point in a quick compiler -- leave those to the development tools to
  be used on other computers.

  something like CLISP would probably be more beneficial on a handheld than
  a full-blown native compiler.  on a handheld computer, there would be a
  definitite need for fully dynamic CLOS support, as the "program" would be
  started once and the objects would essentially live forever.

| There may be other reasons -- ease of porting perhaps?  However I think
| even this turns out not to be that good an argument, since there are at
| least 2 pretty portable public CLs -- gcl and clisp -- and one apparently
| very portable commercial offering -- Franz Allegro.

  I don't see any purpose in a Core Lisp at all.  whether you should allow
  the tree shaking before rather than after application development doesn't
  seem like a question worth answering at this time.

#:Erik
-- 
  suppose we blasted all politicians into space.
  would the SETI project find even one of them?