Re: A personal outline of the history of Coral Common Lisp

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> On Jul 21, 2024, at 8:39 AM, Tim Bradshaw <[email protected]> wrote:
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> Thank you for writing this: these personal histories of things are =
really valuable, I think.
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> --tim
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>> On 21 Jul 2024, at 16:32, Jeremy Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
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>> Disclaimer: This is an outline of the history of CCL only.  There is =
a lot of important history missing because I wanted to focus on CCL. =
I've also written more about the early years because it is less well =
known.
>> TONS of details and people have been left out. I've left out =
descriptions of things like ObjectLisp and Qlogo, because I wanted to =
keep it short and there's Google.=20
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>> This is written from a failing memory, so please send me any =
corrections and suggestions.  I apologize in advance for leaving people =
out and getting things wrong. If anyone wants a more detailed history =
and/or wants to help, let me know. After feedback and corrections, I'll =
probably turn this into a Medium article.=20
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>> A personal outline of the history of Coral Common Lisp
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>> I was hired by the Atari Cambridge Research Lab in 9/83 to write a =
compiler for Qlogo. They gave me a Symbolics 3600 and told me to model =
the compiler on Guy Steele's Rabbit compiler.=20
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>> The Atari lab closed in 4/84. I was one of three founders of Coral =
Software, along with Steve Hain and Glenn Forrester in 9/84. Glenn =
handled the business while Steve and I did the hacking.  Steve wrote the =
initial runtime and I ported the Qlogo compiler to C for the Macintosh.
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>> I was friends with Gary Byers while we both attended The Evergreen =
State College. I convinced him to become Coral's first employee in 1/85. =
A month or two later we hired Chris Fry and Gail Zacharias.
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>> The technical team consisted of myself,  Steve, Gary, Gail, and Fry. =
We focused for two and a half years to produce Object Logo and CCL 1.0. =
We all contributed to all parts of the system but Gary took over the =
compiler, Steve the GC and runtime,  Gail the editor Fred (Fred =
Resembles EMACS Deliberately) and the Common Lisp Reader (written =
largely in LAP, Lisp Assembler Programming!), Fry filled out Common Lisp =
functionality and did QA, I did the IDE and the integration with Mac =
toolbox.
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>> CCL would have totally failed if it wasn't for the non-technical =
people at Coral.  Glenn for raising money, buying the house we used as =
an office, and paying the bills.  Andrew Shalit for the excellent =
documentation.  Phillipe Krakowski for marketing. Susan and Adrian,  =
administrative assistants and others I've forgotten.  At its peak I =
think Coral was eleven people.=20
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>> CCL 1.0 was released in 6/87. It was a complete implementation of =
CLtL1 and included an IDE and ObjectLisp. It ran on 512k Macs. (It was =
actually called Macintosh Allegro Common Lisp because of a misguided =
marketing deal with Franz.) It was an incredible product, acquired many =
fans, and won awards. It kicked ass.
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>> Apple acquired Coral in 12/88 and changed the name of CCL to =
Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL). Apple hired Bill St Clair and Alice Hartley =
to continue working on MCL. Gary, Bill, and Alice continued working on =
MCL while the rest of us worked on Dylan.
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>> Apple spun off MCL to Digitool in the early 90s. Gary, Bill, and =
Alice continued to work on MCL at Digitool. Digitool failed as a =
business and owed Gary, Bill, and Alice a lot of back salary. Gary made =
a deal with Digitool to open source the non IDE portions of MCL in =
return for forgiving the debt. This became OpenMCL.
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>> Gary continued working on OpenMCL for JPL and Sandia. OpenMCL was =
used on space probes! Ron Garrett has told this story.=20
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>> Gary, Gail, and I founded Clozure Associates in 2001. Clozure took =
over OpenMCL and renamed it to Clozure Common Lisp.  Lots of stuff =
happened to CCL in the 2000s including ports to Intel and ARM, an =
excellent Cocoa bridge, and an IDE for Cocoa. Matt Emerson joined =
Clozure and ported CCL to Intel32.
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>> In the 2010s, I left Clozure,  Gary and Gail retired. Clozure =
officially disbanded as a company in 2022 I think. I have a deep =
appreciation for Matt and the others who are keeping CCL alive.
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>> Finally I want to say that it has been an honor and a privilege to =
work with these amazing people for so many years. Thank you!
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