Lisp: Basically Speaking (1981) [pdf]

http://mypage.iu.edu/~rdbeer/Software/BasicLisp/BasicLisp1.pdf

by brudgers • 13 years ago

52 5 13 years ago

mypage.iu.edu

brudgers• 13 years ago

From Randall Beers main page:

"This one is just for fun. When I first learned Lisp in 1981, I did so by reading Winston and Horn's book and writing my own Lisp interpreter. The interpreter was written in Basic on the only system I had access to at the time: a TRS-80 Model I. This interpreter eventually ended up as part of a series of three articles on Lisp that I wrote for 80 Micro, a TRS-80 hobbyist magazine. The first part of the series, which contains the source code for the interpreter itself, is included here. Note that the listing has all optional spaces removed so that I could fit both the interpreter and 1100 (!) cons cells into 16K of memory."

http://mypage.iu.edu/~rdbeer/

unimpressive• 13 years ago

I think that the what this really shows is that having a common language you can expect to work on all installs shortens the feedback loop for obtaining and using small programs by leaps and bounds.

Of course, having to type it in from a magazine is quite a barrier.

jim_lawless• 13 years ago

The "Load 80" icon in the upper-right corner of the first page indicates that the code was on the issue's counterpart cassette tape ... which could be purchased separately.

The1TrueGuy• 13 years ago

Damn that summabitch! I typed that whole monstrosity into my TRS-80 Model III the month that came out and it didn't work! I spent a whole summer debugging and got some things to work but the program never ran right. Granted it might have been the few subtle differences between M1 & M3 but still, my first frustrating experience with hacking someone else's code. I was 17, what a waste of an irreplaceable summer.

Don't suppose any body has a text file version? would still like to copy & paste it into QBasic and finally make it work right. Just outta pure spite.

housel• 13 years ago

I remember reading this when it was new, and typing it in. Not very usable as a Lisp programming environment, running doubly interpreted on a 1.78MHz 8-bit CPU. But, it was certainly nifty.

Lisp: Basically Speaking (1981) [pdf]

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