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Subject: Re: Symbolic: code example

Author: Randall Shane

Date: 08:23:15 01/24/04

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On January 24, 2004 at 09:59:40, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>
>What O/S was ever implemented in Lisp?  I'm certainly not aware of one, although
>that does not mean there was none.  But no _serious_ O/S I have ever used had
>one line of Lisp...  I don't believe I said it could _not_ be done.  I believe I
>implied it _should not_ be done.
>

It was done at least once.  Symbolics Lisp Machines -- http://smbx.org/ (The
Symbolics Museum).

Microcode and processor support for Lisp primitives, all operating system code
and development tools written in Zetalisp.  I used them for a couple of years in
the late eighties at the GE R&D center in upstate NY.

Whether it should have been done is another issue :-)

I actually liked using the machines, but given the limited market, the company
was doomed.  While the special-purpose hardware was somewhat faster than the
general purpose hardware at the time, it was horrendously expensive, and the Sun
3's we replaced them with wer a lot more useful, and almost as fast running
Common Lisp as the Symbolics machines wer running Zetalisp.






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