Re: Amazon used lisp & C exclusively?

On петък, Юли 21 2006, Sidney Markowitz wrote:

Kamen TOMOV wrote:

What kind of decision is that. If you know how to build a
spacecraft why would you start working on a single engine plane?

If you had a vision of a cheap non-polluting single engine plane
that could provide transportation for millions of people, you might
decide to work on that rather than your idea for a spacecraft. Just
like someone may decide they would rather advance humanity as a
whole by furthering our ability to eventually venture into space. I
can see someone who has the ability to do either making either
choice for themselves.

OK, but now even the Lisp runtimes are partially written in C. What is
that if not polution?

In the case of rms, a unix and unix tools clone was clearly better
than a Lisp OS and development environment at spreading the
philosophy of free software to the maximum number of people.

"Better" is misleading. I had my history lesson and I found the answer
to the question. Here is what Stallman said:

"At first, I thought of making a Lisp-based system, but I realized
that wouldn't be a good idea technically. To have something like the
Lisp machine system, you needed special purpose microcode."

He decided that a free Lisp-based system wasn't possible because of
the state of the technology at that time. This is how we got here. He
could do anything but buy everybody a Lisp-machine.

I think he chose to do that as more important than working on
whatever technology he thought the coolest.

What strikes me here is that he knew what technology was the
coolest and so he considered it at first.

Whether you agree or disagree with him, since starting the GNU
project rms has always been totally consistent in making his
priority the push for his beliefs in software freedom.

No doubt about that.


--
Kamen TOMOV
http://www.cybuild.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Taylor Dinerman nails it
    ... programs aimed at building operational spacecraft, ... existing technology, rather than aiming for radical improvements. ... It may well make sense to fly a new, experimental sensor or two on an ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: another definition of SF....
    ... True, but since it takes technology (i.e. spacecraft beyond what we have today) to get our heroes to the action, it would then be science fiction. ... if the resolution of the story depends upon the ... To that end, yeah, I guess Star Wars' Jedi going around and problem solving with "The Force" would be more fantasy than SF; but then we have technology and spacecraft that are beyond what we have today so that pulls it back into SF. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)
  • Re: Looking for sources on day to day life aboard ship
    ... spacecraft. ... The key difference, to which Sean alluded and Shawn violently rejected ... isn't the operating enviroment or the technology or any of the things ...
    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: Timelines
    ... develop from scratch, not invent new technology, but build using ... good for assembling new types of spacecraft out of existing technology ...
    (rec.arts.sf.science)