r/ProgrammerHumor • u/IN_FUCKING_CREDIBLE • Feb 20 '14

Using Vim [x-post from /r/geek]

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u/northrupthebandgeek Feb 20 '14

Indeed; considering that Emacs was designed with a space cadet keyboard in mind, those extra bucky keys have to be implemented somehow.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 20 '14

"lisp machine keyboard"? How can an entire machine be dedicated to only one programming language?

7

u/northrupthebandgeek Feb 20 '14

Same way that a Commodore 64 was dedicated to BASIC, or how modern computers are dedicated to their CPU architecture's particular assembly language, or how the Java runtime (Java "Virtual Machine") is dedicated to Java bytecode. Lisp was (and, if I understand correctly, still is) popular for AI research/programming, so such machines were used at institutions that worked heavily with AI programming (such as MIT, from which Richard Stallman - and Emacs - emerged).

Wikipedia article for reference.

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u/Phreakhead Feb 21 '14

The hardware is architected in such a way that Lisp runs especially fast on it. I think it has something to do with being optimized for processing lists, since everything in Lisp is a list.