"The Evolution of Lisp" (1993) by
GuySteele and
RichardGabriel details some of the rather diverse history of the
LispLanguage and the
ProgrammingLanguages in the
LispFamily, like
CommonLisp,
SchemeLanguage,
InterLisp,
MacLisp, and also reflects on
LispSchemeDifferences. It is available online from
http://www.dreamsongs.com/Essays.html or as a pdf 109pp at
http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf, and other places.
Quoting from the abstract:
-
- Overall, the evolution of Lisp has been guided more by institutional rivalry, one-upsmanship, and the glee born of technical cleverness that is characteristic of the "hacker culture" than by sober assessments of technical requirements. Nevertheless this process has eventually produced both an industrial-strength programming language, messy but powerful, and a technically pure dialect, small but powerful that is suitable for use by programming-language theoreticians.
Q.
What are the names of these "forks"?
A.
CommonLisp and
SchemeLanguage.
CategoryLisp CategoryHistory CategoryPaper