Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!waldorf.csc.calpoly.edu!kestrel.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@kestrel.edu (Jim McDonald)
Subject: Re: Renaming lisp: a suggestion (was: Re: aesthetics of multiple-value-bind (was Re: Urgent! Help! Return more than one argument.))
Message-ID: <1994Dec22.212610.25386@kestrel.edu>
Sender: mcdonald@kestrel.edu (Jim McDonald)
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
References: <D0JGt5.G0@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <19941212T054916Z.enag@naggum.no> <D0rs6v.1q0@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <1994Dec18.002643.11722@Princeton.EDU>
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 1994 21:26:10 GMT
Lines: 22


In article <1994Dec18.002643.11722@Princeton.EDU>, eliot@tucson.princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman) writes:
|> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) wrote:
|> 
|> ;Fair enough, you're entitled... de gustibus nil disputandem est, or
|> ;some such thing (my latin is even worse than my LisP).
|> 
|> "LisP" is rather smalltalkish, is it not? After all we do not write
|> "MultiValBind." We spell it out, using hyphens. Why then tolerate
|> the obscure condensation of "Lisp," really a remnant of an older coding
|> practice that gave functions indecipherable names like "frp" and "dwt,"
|> and instead call lisp "LIST-PROCESSOR"? This is my suggestion.

I think your suggestion inadvertently does point out a problem 
with "LISP" as a name.  It is mnemonic for the lisp processing
portion of the language, but doesn't directly allude to the role
played by lambda.  If one were to rename lisp, "list-processor"
is probably the last name I would choose, because it would only
perpetuate this misleading impression people get of the language.

Being 1/8 serious, I would rather suggest "FIRST-CLASS" to allude
to the flexible manner in which lisp treats code and environements.
