Re: Will RMS be back to Programming now?

[Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss)]

On 2019-11-07 22:58, Jean Louis wrote:
> Dear Nala,
>
> Greetings to China. I am eating here with chopsticks...
>
> * Nala Ginrut <mulei@gnu.org> [2019-11-07 15:03]:
> > Hi Jean!
> >
> > Yes, I totally agreed. And I actually meant RMS's health status,
> > personally I don't think the fame was hurt by the recent comments
> > misinterpretation or even the previous personal activity years ago.
> > If his health status is permitted, then maybe he can do some 
> > advocating
> > work by simple coding work, it's kind of advertisement. ;-)
>
> His programming was significant for the inception of GNU operating
> system, as there were not many people to do it except of RMS.

There is a lot more to RMS than just GNU.

RMS was involved in Common Lisp; he was part of the initial Common Lisp
group:[1]

In the 1970's, he evidently developed a Lisp dialect in which 0 was
false and the empty list, rather than the symbol nil.[2]
This might have helped inoculate Stallman against later having allergic
reactions to C, which was adopted in a major way by GNU.

RMS invented something called phantom stacks[3]; I can recommend this 
paper
for the writing quality alone. Any Lisp-head will appreciate it.

RMS co-authored some papers in the 1970's with Sussman and Steele.

  "He was special," recalls Gerald Sussman, an MIT faculty member and 
former
  AI Lab researcher. Describing Stallman as a "clear thinker and a clear
  designer," Sussman employed Stallman as a research-project assistant
  beginning in 1975. The project was complex, involving the creation of 
an
  AI program that could analyze circuit diagrams. Not only did it 
involve
  an expert's command of Lisp, a programming language built specifically
  for AI applications, but it also required an understanding of how a 
human
  might approach the same task."[4]

---
[1] https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf, P. 39
[2] https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf, P. 63
[3] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6331
[4] "Free as in Freedom", Chapter 6, 
https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch06.html