[lispm]

> The major goal of Common Lisp was commonality, and that means incorporating forms from various dialects into one and to maintain compatibility, like you said. That goal has been accomplished.

That's misleading. The 'various dialects' were mostly three very similar successor implementations of Maclisp.

Common Lisp was designed as a single successor language to Maclisp. There were successors of Maclisp for different computers under development: NIL (on a super computer and the VAX), Spice Lisp (for a new breed of workstations), Lisp Machine Lisp (developed for MIT's Lisp Machine systems), ... We are talking about new implementations of basically very similar languages, with Lisp Machine Lisp as the major influence.

DARPA wanted that these and future successor implementations stayed compatible. Not every Lisp application for the military should come with its own incompatible implementation of the language. NIL then looked a lot like CL. Spice Lisp evolved into CMUCL. Lisp Machines then got a CL implementation integrated with Lisp Machine Lisp.

From CLTL:

> Common Lisp originated in an attempt to focus the work of several implementation groups, each of which was constructing successor implementations of MacLisp for different computers.

Common Lisp was not designed to be compatible with other Lisp dialects like Interlisp, Scheme, Standard Lisp, ...

[lngnmn]

You are right - Common Dialect of MacLisp Successors. Thank you!