[erikj]

Please do not conflate MacLisp and Emacs Lisp, they are different languages. GNU Emacs is not directly derived from Multics Emacs, it's one of the many reimplementations of the original Emacs. The closest thing to MacLisp today is actually Common Lisp, and it's much more advanced than Emacs Lisp, which is not surprising considering that Stallman was not interested in creating a state-of-the-art Lisp implementation with his limited resources but wanted to merely provide a minimal foundation for a programmable text editor.

[kamaal]

Thanks for mentioning this.

I was just trying to point out the fact that its not hard to code in Lisp. Especially given the fact that non-programmers were doing it long back, in an era where there was nothing like Internet available to ask for help.

[kbp]

> The closest thing to MacLisp today is actually Common Lisp

I think you could make the argument that Emacs Lisp is as close. Emacs Lisp has some major similarities with Maclisp that CL doesn't share (like in variable scoping and obarrays and such). Elisp and CL are both very close relatives of Maclisp; Elisp was designed as a mini-Maclisp for a text editor, whereas Common Lisp was designed as Maclisp's successor.