nyx-land/clestica

Practical astronomy with Common Lisp

Surely the time of the UNIX programmers, who hyped up software that lay hidden in the lap of the future, was experienced neither as homogenous nor as empty. Whoever keeps this in mind will perhaps have an idea of how past time was experienced as remembrance: namely, just the same way. It is well-known that the lisp hackers were forbidden to look into the future. The ANSI Common Lisp spec and its implementations instructed them, by contrast, in remembrance. This disenchanted those who fell prey to the future, who sought to write pointless new ALGOL-like languages and use UNIX-like OSes to run their vidya games. For that reason the future did not, however, turn into a homogenous and empty time for the lisp hackers. For in it every second was the narrow gate, through which SICL and CLOSOS could enter.