Reviving Lisp for smaller programmable machines

The paper refers to an ARM Cortex M4 with around a MB of flash and and few hundreds of KB of RAM; well that&#x27;s perhaps a MCU, but to be honest that&#x27;s quite powerful.<p>Micropython[1] targets that type of MCU, and even runs in a PIC16, so I&#x27;m not impressed.<p>When I was working on my AVR based 8-bit microcomputer (32KB of flash, 2KB of RAM) I did a lot of research regarding Lisp, and I gave up because it can&#x27;t be done.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;micropython&#x2F;micropython" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;micropython&#x2F;micropython</a><p>Edit: yes, I evaluated PicoLisp and Picobit (and many others).

&gt; It is still the most favored programming language for artificial intelligence research.<p>Correction: It is still the most favored programming language for GOFAI research.<p>It&#x27;s pretty clear at this point (to me and to most active AI researchers) that some massively parallel statistical system (like Deep Learning based neural network, or Hawkins HTM, or something similar) will be a key ingredient, probably the dominant paradigm, in achieving electronic general intelligence. And lisp is pretty much absent in communities involved with that paradigm.

Earlier discussion of PicoLisp on HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=962795" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=962795</a>

real mature lisp, number of 4clojure and rosetta tasks implemented. Wide OS support, 64bit version implemented on its own assembler. Perfect as Forth.

Back when I did more embedded systems as a profession I used various Forths and Schemes and it was far and away my preferred environment.<p>Those didn&#x27;t run on a VM, though; while even the cheapest controllers are an order of magnitude (or two) faster than what I had back then I do wonder about the performance implications. For those types of systems portability wasn&#x27;t really a concern, the worst case was that we&#x27;d upgrade the processor to a later family member, making the port almost always trivial.<p>Still, great to see.

If you are interested in this, check also PicoBit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;stamourv&#x2F;picobit" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;stamourv&#x2F;picobit</a>

Normal PicoLisp has a lot built-in: database, Prolog, web server, and lots more at less than 600K for the OpenWRT distribution. The MiniPicoLisp distribution, sans all the libraries, is only 73kB. It is a very well-thought Lisp geared for decades for practical web and database applications. Check the rosetta code entries for it to compare to other languages, simply amazing!

It would be nice to rename the &#x27;de&#x27; form to &#x27;le&#x27;. Imagine: (le delay () ...), etc.