Text File

Aucbvax.5932 fa.info-vax utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!info-vax Sat Jan 23 15:16:23 1982

>From JONL@MIT-MC Sat Jan 23 15:12:42 1982 As you know, my mail box is a public utility, and everyone reads it, so someone else with an ax to grind may have replied to your note about NIL being dead. The actual state is that is sort of runs, doesn't have a working garbage collector but RLB is working on that now, and is fairly slow (not much time put into optimization yet).

The future of NIL development at MIT appears limited -- currently no one on the academic staff wants to take time out to administer a development project (wastes precious time on the "tenure" track), and MIT doesn't permit non-academic-faculty to be principal investigators. Also, there are currently no contract funds specifically for NIL work, and after this summer, there most likely won't be the option of diverting MacSYMA funds off into it. As of the first of November, RWK more-or-less left MIT for SYMBOLICS. As of the first of January, RLB has joined SYMBOLICS, and he'll likely be able to spend very little time on the MIT NIL after the end of this month (distribution date has been set at Jan 30.) Possibly this picture may change, but without funds or compotent personnel it appears grim.

As to whether some *ongoing* research uses NIL (other than the NIL development itself) well, that is a matter of opinion; as Bill vanMelle mentioned in his report on the Common LISP meeting, there are such allegations being made, but not by any group speaking for itself. Most MIT lisp-based research centers around the LISPM, and to some degree the PDP10 with a little happening on Multics. Components of MacSYMA run on VAX/NIL, although it would be hard to say that it is generally usable there (I've heard allegations that it has been run on the Plasma Fusion VAX, but don't know how satisfactory it has been; it isn't generally run on the LCS VAX)

DEC appears likely to support a VMS implementation of COMMON LISP, and of course this is what I've been pushing since last fall. I think CMU may get a contract to bring it up.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.