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.
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