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Aucbvax.4752 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Wed Oct 28 11:40:55 1981 Re: lisp >From sdyer@BBN-UNIX Wed Oct 28 10:51:16 1981 It really burned me to see your ungracious note on the unix-wizards mailing list regarding Harvard LISP. We have never made any special claims for it. It was written in 1974 as a teaching tool for 1st semester computer science majors, and was designed to introduce students to LISP, and to enable students to implement significant parts of the language in MACRO-11. It wasn't designed to be used for research or production, it does not claim to implement MACLISP, and those who want the power of MACLISP for their 11/23's will be unhappy.

Harvard LISP predates Winston's book on LISP; it IS quite compatible with several other texts, namely C. Weissman's "LISP 1.5 Primer" and Friedman's "The Little Lisper".

Harvard LISP has been frozen for a long time, except for the minor job of converting it to run under V7. As you allude, it isn't quite state-of-the-art, but, then, it was never intended to be. It is, however, available for the PDP-11, has worked well in a student environment for 7 years, and essentially free ($50 tape dist fee or with Berkeley 2.8BSD) to all those who might want it.

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