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In Common Lisp users use Common Lisp rather than users using programs written by programmers in <language x>. I think it comes directly from the idea of Lisp Machines where typing s-expressions was how users used the computer.

That's radically different from Smalltalk and the Dynabook. Part of its mandate was to be used by children which by definition meant there was an assumption of substantial difference in cognitive capacity between end users and programmers.

That's the intellectual model that's mostly won. It's distinct from a model in which the causal premise for differences in knowledge is expertise and experience.



Incidentally, this is one of the most interesting aspects of the "crank" operating system Temple OS, every program in the language is written in a variant of C that's compiled on the fly, and the shell itself is just a C REPL. I've never used it but found this article very interesting:

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-temp...


Davis' work is an awesome intellectual achievement.


Yeah it really is pretty great. I have a soft spot in my heart for PC speaker music and rough-looking screen 12 user interfaces.




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