Acknowledgments FIRST EDITION (1984)

Common Lisp was designed by a diverse group of people affiliated with many institutions.

Contributors to the design and implementation of Common Lisp and to the polishing of this book are hereby gratefully acknowledged:

Considerable encouragement and moral support were also provided by:

Jan Zubkoff of Carnegie-Mellon University provided a great deal of organization, secretarial support, and unfailing good cheer in the face of adversity.

The development of Common Lisp would most probably not have been possible without the electronic message system provided by the ARPANET. Design decisions were made on several hundred distinct points, for the most part by consensus, and by simple majority vote when necessary. Except for two one-day face-to-face meetings, all of the language design and discussion was done through the ARPANET message system, which permitted effortless dissemination of messages to dozens of people, and several interchanges per day. The message system also provided automatic archiving of the entire discussion, which has proved invaluable in the preparation of this reference manual. Over the course of thirty months, approximately 3000 messages were sent (an average of three per day), ranging in length from one line to twenty pages. Assuming 5000 characters per printed page of text, the entire discussion totaled about 1100 pages. It would have been substantially more difficult to have conducted this discussion by any other means, and would have required much more time.

The ideas in Common Lisp have come from many sources and been polished by much discussion. I am responsible for the form of this book, and for any errors or inconsistencies that may remain; but the credit for the design and support of Common Lisp lies with the individuals named above, each of whom has made significant contributions.

The organization and content of this book were inspired in large part by the MacLISP Reference Manual by David A. Moon and others [33], and by the LISP Machine Manual (fourth edition) by Daniel Weinreb and David Moon [55], which in turn acknowledges the efforts of Richard Stallman, Mike McMahon, Alan Bawden, Glenn Burke, and “many people too numerous to list.”

I thank Phyllis Keenan, Chase Duffy, Virginia Anderson, John Osborn, and Jonathan Baker of Digital Press for their help in preparing this book for publication. Jane Blake did an admirable job of copy-editing. James Gibson and Katherine Downs of Waldman Graphics were most cooperative in typesetting this book from my on-line manuscript files.

I am grateful to Carnegie-Mellon University and to Tartan Laboratories Incorporated for supporting me in the writing of this book over the last three years.

Part of the work on this book was done in conjunction with the Carnegie-Mellon University Spice Project, an effort to construct an advanced scientific software development environment for personal computers. The Spice Project is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense, ARPA Order 3597, monitored by the Air Force Avionics Laboratory under contract F33615-78-C-1551. The views and conclusions contained in this book are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the U.S. Government.

Most of the writing of this book took place between midnight and 5 A.M. I am grateful to Barbara, Julia, and Peter for putting up with it, and for their love.