lisp

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From sdyer at BBN-UNIX Wed Oct 28 10:51:16 1981
It really burned me to see your ungracious note on the
unix-wizards mailing list regarding Harvard LISP.  We have never
made any special claims for it.  It was written in 1974 as a teaching tool
for 1st semester computer science majors, and was designed
to introduce students to LISP, and to enable students to implement
significant parts of the language in MACRO-11.  It wasn't
designed to be used for research or production, it does not claim to
implement MACLISP, and those who want the power of MACLISP for their
11/23's will be unhappy.

Harvard LISP predates Winston's book on LISP;  it IS quite
compatible with several other texts, namely C. Weissman's "LISP 1.5 Primer"
and Friedman's "The Little Lisper".  

Harvard LISP has been frozen for a long time, except for the minor
job of converting it to run under V7.  As you allude, it isn't quite
state-of-the-art, but, then, it was never intended to be.  It is,
however, available for the PDP-11, has worked well in a student
environment for 7 years, and essentially free ($50 tape dist fee or
with Berkeley 2.8BSD) to all those who might want it.