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not really. The Symbolics Lisp Machine came with a huge library of thousands of class and 30000+ functions.

Additionally it had compilers for Fortran, C, Pascal and others. It could compile things like TeX and X11 on the Lisp Machine.

He just does not want to build on the JVM. I can understand that. The JVM is optimized for Java and nothing else. SUN has not done much to support other languages (functional, dynamic, ...) on top of the JVM (Microsoft does that with its .net infrastructure, though). Using the JVM for Lisp is fine, because it is there. But it is ugly, since it is alien for Lisp. More alien than x86 is for Lisp.




His complaint is that the JVM libraries are not coded in Lisp: opaque routines having no underlying Lispiness. He would rather have no libraries at all, so every programmer needing library functionality has to "implement the feature himself correctly," where "correctly" means "in Lisp." His aesthetic sense has run amok and is out to destroy everything that isn't a "crystalline pyramid," regardless of how useful it is.

Additionally it had compilers for Fortran, C, Pascal and others.

Until this wacko logs in and deletes them, or replaces them with trojans to teach you a lesson about intellectual rigor ;-)

The JVM is optimized for Java and nothing else.

That's true, but x86 is optimized for C and nothing else, so how can you do any better (in real life?) At least the JVM has potential. Sun has realized that dynamic language performance is important, and they're busy improving support for languages like Jython and JRuby. Lisps will benefit from that work.




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