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by skissane 766 days ago
> Maybe in the early early 80s that was the case, but PCs were still 16-bit back then, and would've been a poor fit for Lisp anyway.

There were LISPs for 16 bit MS-DOS. The most famous was arguably XLISP, which was used as the basis for AutoCAD’s AutoLISP extension language, and also the XLISPSTAT statistics package. Another was muLISP, which was resold by Microsoft as Microsoft LISP, and also used as the basis of the muMATH computer algebra system, and also its successor Derive.
1 comments
bitwize 766 days ago
I'm familiar with Xlisp, Microsoft Lisp, and PC-Scheme. What I'm not sure about is how performant they were, or whether large systems could be built with them.
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skissane 765 days ago
> What I'm not sure about is how performant they were,

They were sufficiently performant to be used in anger. I mentioned some of the real world uses

> or whether large systems could be built with them

I mentioned the muMATH computer algebra system, built with muLISP. I think that would count as a large system, at least by the standards of the time.

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