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A Modern Lisp Machine from Scratch (2018)

I am often fascinated by old tech.

While I do not have the experience nor the expertise on the subject, in the last months, some very specific stuff has caught my eye, and those are the Lisp Machines.

I’ve been using Common Lisp for about three years and a half and, though only now I began to make cool stuff using the language, the fact that it is not very used bothers me a lot. I mean, of course, it is not something as welcoming in terms of first impression. Lisp is known for its overwhelming parentheses, which often hide the true power of the language.

But this bad first impression cloaks the possibilities of a mature language such as Common Lisp, of Lisps in general, and of specialized hardware and systems, built to ensure performance on Lisp execution.

On this post, I try to present very early ideas in a project of a new, modern Lisp Machine of sorts; one which might have the potential to make true hackers feel at home with the idea of running a highly customizable, but also efficient Unix-like system built to run Lisp on specialized, modern hardware.

Read in full here:

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