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by kunabi 2959 days ago
At the request of John McCarthy, Lisp’s creator, no single language that is a member of the Lisp family is to be intended to be the definitive dialect; that is, none is to be called just “LISP.”

So much innovation has happened since the CLHS that to put up a fluff site feels like an effort of "resurrection". When in reality the Lisp family has continued to evolve since then. To limit yourself to just CL, as I did, for a long time, results a bit of a 'losing my religion'. You'll be confounded by things long since solved, and in the end perhaps write all of "Lisp" off. Do yourself a favor and keep and open mind to the family, and not one common incarnation that predates some developers.

1 comments

"Fluff" "FLUFF"??? If that's fluff then most of the rest of the web is fluff... oh wait.

Seriously, the web site is a very informative site about "Common Lisp" - a specific dialect of Lisp. It's right there when you click the link, big letters - "Common Lisp" - you can't miss it.

You could argue about the URL "lisp-lang.org" - but why?

"We are in the process of decoding the original format used for the CLHS." This is a smell that highlights the above post it seems.
It's more of an issue at the interface of technology and licensing. The CLHS (Common Lisp Hyper Specification) is a very large, web based document written in the 80's and it looks like an old Geocities web site. I believe the CLHS license says that it's not allowed to be changed (to protect the standard - I believe - someone correct me please) and so the community is working from slightly older drafts and figuring out how to automate the conversion to something that looks more modern. It's not a problem with Common Lisp - it's a problem that HTML, the web and user expectations have been changing over the years. There's that permanence thing again.
> is working from slightly older drafts

Not really, the content is the same.