Nope! When you don't capitalize lisp, it refers to a speech impediment.

LISP in all caps refers to classic Lisp, and was once widely used for the family: all kinds of dialects and implementations used LISP in their names, even Common Lisp ones. "Common LISP" was a thing; e.g. in the title of the book Common LISPcraft by Robert Wilensky.

This situation was similar to how other languages were capitalized: FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC. I suspect part of the reason for all the shouting was the limited support for lower case characters in some printing/terminal equipment. Many of the names involved were acronyms, or near acronyms.

Today, and for probably at least three decades, those languages have been called Fortran, Cobol, Basic (e.g. Microsoft Visual Basic, not Microsoft Visual BASIC). It's the same situation with Lisp.

Thanks for clearing that up. I have a memory of reading some conversation here that explained that Lisp usually refers to Common Lisp and people refer to Scheme specifically. It was long ago though. In any event the topic of the thread is definitely Common Lisp and I suspect that the parent was not aware

I've collected a few links I've given out before on this subject if you'd like to read more into it: https://www.thejach.com/view/2022/1/thoughts_on_writings_on_... To reiterate some of my thoughts (which are far less interesting or important than the links) I think it's a very old and tiresome and largely pointless debate, even if it can be a fun waste of time to ponder, but in any case it's mostly been lost. #lisp even gave up its CL-focused IRC channel in the move to Libera and is now at #commonlisp.

But that's just like most debates over words and changing common usage meanings. It doesn't even matter if the new common usage is or becomes the most popular usage or not, at some point it's common enough that a new entry in any dictionary is warranted. (The term "Lisp" obviously predates Common Lisp, but part of the success of Common Lisp led to "Lisp" gaining common usage to refer just to CL.) It's unfortunate that the alternate usage isn't something crisp, like how "literally" can be taken to mean something not literally true and is just an exaggeration or emphasis, and instead a common usage of "Lisp/lisp/a lisp/Lisp family/Lisp dialect" is as a poorly defined fuzzy feeling of the spirit or flavor of "Lisp-like" languages. It can be a mess trying to pin down whatever commonalities are meant by that feeling. My favorite attempt is something like a language written in its own literal data structures. But depending on the speaker the feeling might encompass things like WebAssembly (s-exps sorta!) or Dylan or even Julia, and in the past has once encompassed things like Ruby or Python (in the sense of "acceptable lisp").

For me and many others (like the title of this thread) unqualified Lisp still typically means Common Lisp, it's still a common enough usage, and I'll at least keep using it that way almost all the time for the foreseeable future just as others avoid using "literally" as "figuratively" or "virtually". But I don't think it's worthwhile to do so from a "fight the good fight" standpoint or to be consumed by a melancholic desire for a rectification of names. On the brighter side, at least for Lisp if there's communication confusion it's probably only a good thing in producing cognitive dissonance and driving some curiosity towards CL. (For example if someone talks about unqualified Lisp in conjunction with the form of GOTO that CL has which has been there since LISP 1.5, or in conjunction with OOP, or the function compile-file, someone reading with a particular fuzzy usage of Lisp in mind may think "I thought Lisp was a functional/minimal/interpreted language?" and go on to learn something. Similar positive learning benefits can come from using the fuzzy meaning of Lisp in e.g. setting up events or community spaces, where Schemers or Clojurists or whoever are welcome, since that gives more people in those other languages as well as the fuzzy-Lisp-curious a chance to learn about CL, and CL people a chance to learn about what's going on outside the bubble.)

> When you capitalize lisp as in Lisp, that usually refers to Common Lisp

Since when? Lisp is, and has almost always been, a family of languages.

I think it's a convention, but I could well be wrong. Maybe it refers to LISP. But maybe it's wrong too. Nonetheless, the lisp being discussed in this thread is Common Lisp

Quite the opposite I'd say... in my experience, Lispers tend to say "Lisp" when they are being inclusive of the whole family of languages & its philosophies. This convention began way back in pre-Common Lisp days, when there was literally no common standard: much as we say "Unix" to refer to the family of related-but-different OS's that once proliferated.

Generally I've seen capitalized LISP used only to refer to the original language, from McCarthy's lab (e.g., versions 1 and 1.5). By the time Interlisp landed in the late 60's, the all-caps convention has already begun to slip.

That's not to disagree with your own experiences: I just suspect they are "regional", so to speak, and not reflective of the larger Lisp community.

> I just suspect they are "regional", so to speak, and not reflective of the larger Lisp community

yeah i think there is definitely a component of that which led to my claim. i think it is better that 'lisp' should refer to a whole family of languages when context is not obvious. even when context is clear it is helpful to distinguish what lisp one is talking about in order to avoid ambiguity

OK that was not my intention. I was talking about Lisp flavours in general. I kinda prefer Scheme myself.

i think that most of things discussed here pertain strictly to cl. also implementing some random minimal lisp does not make you an expert in common lisp at all. try to implement common lisp and tell me how it goes

What a bizarre argument. Have you implemented Common Lisp yourself? If not then you know nothing about Lisp then?

but it was you who claimed to be an expert in lisp and said that you implemented several lisps in support of that claim

I made no claims to be an expert in Lisp.

you claimed you know it well. i think it is an acceptable synonym