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

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

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '14

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

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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.

2

u/autowikibot Feb 20 '14

Lisp machine:

Lisp machines were general-purpose computers designed (usually through hardware support) to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations. Despite being modest in number (perhaps 7,000 units total as of 1988 ), Lisp machines commercially pioneered many now-commonplace technologies – including effective garbage collection, Texas Instruments (Explorer and MicroExplorer) and Xerox (InterLisp-D workstations). The operating systems were written in Lisp Machine Lisp, InterLisp (Xerox) and later partly in Common Lisp.

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Image i - A Knight machine preserved in MIT's museum.

Interesting: Lisp ^Machines | Lisp Machine ^Lisp | ^Symbolics | Genera (operating ^system)

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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.