A Brief History of Common Lisp

Lisp is one of the oldest high-level programming languages in use today (only Fortran is older, by a year).

It's extensibility has allowed it to keep up with developments in language design, structured programming, and software engineering.

Software development in Lisp

• is faster than in C, slower than with authoring tools
• is not limited to a pre-existing toolset
• produces programs 2 to 10 times slower than C

Most of the interactive systems built at ILS have been in Common Lisp on the Macintosh. You don't need C/C++ on a workstation to build practical systems!

Common Lisp

Common Lisp was designed by a committee (but a pretty smart one) to combine, rationalize, and standardize a number of high-powered, annoyingly incompatible dialects of Lisp.

Other modern dialects include:

• Scheme - used for education, e.g., CS 111 and 211, language design research, and as a small language for applications such as robotics
• LeLisp, EuLisp - European Common Lisps

This course however is in Common Lisp.

Common Lisp (version 1)

Common Lisp (v1) is the original language. Free implementations include:

• CLISP (PC's) - compiler, no graphics
• Xlisp 2.1g (PC's, Mac's) - a large subset of v1, no compiler or graphics, non-standard object system
• XLISPSTAT (PC's, Mac's) - Xlisp 2.1g, with compiler, graphics, another non-standard object system, and statistical routines
• (Austin) Kyoto Common Lisp (Unix) - now GNU Common Lisp

Common Lisp (version 2)

Common Lisp (v2) adds sophisticated facilities for

• complex iterations (LOOP, SERIES)
• object-oriented programming (CLOS)
• exceptional condition handling
• data-driven pretty-printing

Implementations of Common Lisp (v2) include recent versions of

• Macintosh Common Lisp (Mac's)
• Allegro Common Lisp (Unix and PC's)
• Lucid Common Lisp (Unix)

Comments? Send mail to Chris Riesbeck.