31 Oct
2011
31 Oct
'11
2:10 p.m.
Rich Alderson wrote:
[lots of good stuff]
At the same time, over at the MIT AI Lab, people were
experimenting with new
progamming languages all the time, and the best language for implementing
new programming languages was LISP, and the best LISP was MACLISP. These
folks were looking into problem-solving systems, and the first successful
language of this type was PLANNER. This was followed by CONNIVER. Then,
like a little mammaLisp among the dinoLisps, there arose SCHEME. This was
written, like the others in MACLISP, and showed its dinoLisp DNA in places.
The original name of the language was SCHEMER, following the general
theme at the lab. But filenames in ITS were limited to six characters,
as explained in
http://community.schemewiki.org/?scheme-faq-general
A similar limit (5 characters for filenames in the IBM 1130) caused the
"fourth generation language" to become FORTH:
http://www.colorforth.com/HOPL.html
-- Jecel
P.S.: the "MAC" in MACLISP is either "Multiple Access Computers" or
"Machine-Aided Cognition", the two significant contributions of John
McCarthy
http://maclisp.info/pitmanual/