Re:Ask HN: Production Lisp in 2020?
by mikelevins on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @12:14PM
(#23236544)
Just a nit: the film "The Invisible Man" is unrelated, based on a novel by H. G. Wells about a scientist who drives himself mad with a technique that renders him invisible.
Ralph was named for Ralph Ellison, author of a different, later book Invisible Man, about being a black man in America.
You are right, wikipedia: According to Apple Confidential by Owen W. Linzmayer, the original code name for the Dylan project was Ralph, for Ralph Ellison, author of the novel Invisible Man, to reflect its status as a secret research project.
Dylan originally used Lisp syntax, as documented in the Dylan Manual; there was angst when it changed. I don't have that with me, but it's online: http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-dylan/book.annotated/
Ralph used prefix notation, dylan infix notation. Here you can find an implementation of ralph:(2)
From (2): Ralph is a Lisp-1 dialect that compiles to JavaScript. It is heavily inspired by an early version of Dylan (also known as "Prefix Dylan"), as described in Dylan – An object-oriented dynamic language.
Also (3) is about a Lisp to Dylan translator. There is also norvig lisp to dylan translator cited in (3).
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Dylan_programmi...
(2) https://github.com/turbolent/ralph
(3) https://tim.pritlove.org/2003/11/10/converting-lisp-to-dylan...