Portability (was Re: Unidentified subject!)

[Marcus Daniels]

>>>>> "AA" == Adam Alpern <Alpern@brightware.com> writes:

AA> I'd really like if the code I write for that system will still run
AA> in the 3 LISPs I currently use - Macintosh Common LISP, CMU-CL,
AA> and Lucid (now Liquid) Common LISP.

MD>  I'd really like Emacs and DSSSL to run on LispOS.  I'd really like
MD> to have GCC work on LispOS.

AA> And your point is?

You have a few big apps you want that are written in Common Lisp,
and I have big apps that are not. 

o DSSSL uses a purely functional dialect of Scheme.
o GCC is written in C.
o The FSF plan is to layer Emacs over Guile Scheme (which will
  translate the elisp). 

One possible conclusion is Might Makes Right, the contributors decide
what is important.  Another possible conclusion is that as far as a
kernel goes less is more ; write it in Scheme (in the spirit of Guile,
try to translate other languages).  Another is to make each language
run on a universal virtual machine.  A fourth is to focus on building
general purpose components for a configurable Lisp OSes -- APIs for a
persistent object store, implementing threads for CMU-CL, add a
generational garbage collector for MIT Scheme, a killer Lisp oriented
Mail app, etc.  A fifth is to stick with Unixish things and write more
and more system oriented Lisp.