Hello -

I've read a lot about Erik Naggum and I see that a lot of people
regard him as an influential figure for the lisp community, there is
even a library of quotes by Erik Naggum, some even call it like a
wisdom of him about lisp and programming.

But I have really hard times to find what he wrote in lisp, not about
lisp. The only thing I was able to get is "The Long, Painful History
of Time", plus some code in c.l.l. And that's all. That seems odd to
me, for the man who wrote so much about lisp, wrote so little code in
lisp.

Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
Naggum? Code written in other languages?

Thanks.

Best,
 Art

Art <artobrezan@yahoo.com> writes:

> Hello -
>
> I've read a lot about Erik Naggum and I see that a lot of people
> regard him as an influential figure for the lisp community, there is
> even a library of quotes by Erik Naggum, some even call it like a
> wisdom of him about lisp and programming.
>
> But I have really hard times to find what he wrote in lisp, not about
> lisp. The only thing I was able to get is "The Long, Painful History
> of Time", plus some code in c.l.l. And that's all. That seems odd to
> me, for the man who wrote so much about lisp, wrote so little code in
> lisp.

I don't think there's evidence that he wrote little code in Lisp. As far
as I know, he did not share very much CL code publicly aside from small
functions and things like that on comp.lang.lisp, but my impression is
that he wrote quite a lot of code in CL that was never publicly shared.

http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3144685738025120@naggum.no.html has
some discussion about the topic. Here's an excerpt:

  if giving source code to random people is such a panacea, the people
  who want the source code should have very convincing arguments why
  they should be given it, arguments that should make good business
  sense here and now.  the reason I don't believe in the panacea is that
  people aren't making solid cases for releasing source code that
  business people will listen to, and it is not _only_ because human
  beings are prone to act in contradiction with their personal or
  long-term interests.  put bluntly, if I have some source, what's in it
  for me if I give it to everybody?  those who want other people's
  source code have failed to consider the transverse situation.  one
  person's want is not automatically the motivation of another;
  something has to come between that can motivate those who have
  something to give, and it is important to understand what would fill
  the need and stop the want, otherwise it is meaningless to give them
  anything at all.  if the value of open source was as great as its
  proposers want it to be, the only thing that keeps vendors from giving
  it out to everybody is a failure to understand their own (still the
  vendors') needs.  my advice is: stop talking about the value of source
  code to those who will get it for free, and concentrate on the value
  of giving away source code for free.

Zach

> I don't think there's evidence that he wrote little code in Lisp. As far
> as I know, he did not share very much CL code publicly aside from small
> functions and things like that on comp.lang.lisp, but my impression is
> that he wrote quite a lot of code in CL that was never publicly shared.

Ok, let's put it in a different way: is there his resume that says
what companies he worked for and what projects he was involved with?

"A picture is worth a thousand words". What good is a painter who says
how great his pictures are, but shows no pictures?..

Best,
 Art

On 18/01/2011 20:58, Art wrote:
> Hello -
>
> I've read a lot about Erik Naggum and I see that a lot of people
> regard him as an influential figure for the lisp community, there is
> even a library of quotes by Erik Naggum, some even call it like a
> wisdom of him about lisp and programming.
>
> But I have really hard times to find what he wrote in lisp, not about
> lisp. The only thing I was able to get is "The Long, Painful History
> of Time", plus some code in c.l.l. And that's all. That seems odd to
> me, for the man who wrote so much about lisp, wrote so little code in
> lisp.
>
> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
> Naggum? Code written in other languages?

A large part of the Common Lisp community is developing closed-source 
software.


Pascal

-- 
My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/

Art <artobrezan@yahoo.com> writes:

>> I don't think there's evidence that he wrote little code in Lisp. As far
>> as I know, he did not share very much CL code publicly aside from small
>> functions and things like that on comp.lang.lisp, but my impression is
>> that he wrote quite a lot of code in CL that was never publicly shared.
>
> Ok, let's put it in a different way: is there his resume that says
> what companies he worked for and what projects he was involved with?

I don't think there's any concise summary like that.

> "A picture is worth a thousand words". What good is a painter who says
> how great his pictures are, but shows no pictures?..

I don't think Erik ever wrote about how great his pictures were.

Zach

> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
> Naggum? Code written in other languages?

Check this out. 
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e239591cbc9eb18d
Not that it holds any evidence, but Wikipedia cites this as proof that He 
contributed to Emacs (supposedly GNU) for a long time.

On Tue, Jan 18 2011, Krzysztof Bieniasz wrote:

>> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
>> Naggum? Code written in other languages?
>
> Check this out. 
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e239591cbc9eb18d
> Not that it holds any evidence, but Wikipedia cites this as proof that He 
> contributed to Emacs (supposedly GNU) for a long time.

He's in the commit history of GNU Emacs, but I didn't find large amounts
of significant new code, just lots of cleanup and small tidbits of new
code.  But he definitely contributed between 1995 and 1997.

David

Art <artobrezan@yahoo.com> writes:

> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
> Naggum?

AFAIK, he created in-house commercial software for a number of
companies, including one where he was employed for several years, so a
bulk of his lisp code has no public links to it.
-- 
  (espen)

[Espen Vestre <espen@vestre.net>]

> Art <artobrezan@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
>> Naggum?
>
> AFAIK, he created in-house commercial software for a number of
> companies, including one where he was employed for several years, so a
> bulk of his lisp code has no public links to it.

Most notably, if memory serves, this company:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norges_Handels_og_Sj%C3%B8fartstidende

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell

On Jan 18, 11:58=A0am, Art <artobre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello -
>
> I've read a lot about Erik Naggum and I see that a lot of people
> regard him as an influential figure for the lisp community, there is
> even a library of quotes by Erik Naggum, some even call it like a
> wisdom of him about lisp and programming.
>
> But I have really hard times to find what he wrote in lisp, not about
> lisp. The only thing I was able to get is "The Long, Painful History
> of Time", plus some code in c.l.l. And that's all. That seems odd to
> me, for the man who wrote so much about lisp, wrote so little code in
> lisp.
>
> Could anyone provide me links to the code written in lisp by Erik
> Naggum? Code written in other languages?

The question you should answer (perhaps for yourself) is "why do I
want such code?"  Possible answers:

 - To see code touched by a master

 - To prove that Erik Naggum really did code Lisp

 - To show that he wasn't really a Lisp master

 - To have a body of code to copy

All of these might be legitimate answers, though they will definitely
be telling re your motivations.  I for one suggest that you look at
any lisp code and then analyze whether it is good or not, regardless
of the author.  The more time you spend with Lisp code, the better
you'll become at analyzing it.

Speaking of authorship, I've often argued in LOC (lines-of-code
measurement) discussions that I should really be paid, not for the
number of LOC I write, but for the LOC I _remove_; refactored code in
a language that lends itself well to refactoring is often the best
code you can look at, so perhaps the code you most want to see of Erik
Naggum is the code he threw away (to compare to the code still
present).  As hard as it seems to find present code, this refactored
code is likely even harder to find (as is most refactored code, unless
you have access to source control repositories).

Since you haven't described your motivations, we can only guess, and
are not likely to be of much help to you.

Duane

Duane Rettig <duane@franz.com> writes:

> Speaking of authorship, I've often argued in LOC (lines-of-code
> measurement) discussions that I should really be paid, not for the
> number of LOC I write, but for the LOC I _remove_; 

Very good point! 
-- 
  (espen)

On 1/19/11 3:26 PM, Duane Rettig wrote:
> Speaking of authorship, I've often argued in LOC (lines-of-code
> measurement) discussions that I should really be paid, not for the
> number of LOC I write, but for the LOC I _remove_; refactored code in

Heh.  Where I used to work, passing lint (C code) was very, very
important to management.  (That somehow related to code "quality").  We
joked amongst ourselves that if that's all that matters, then let's
delete all the code.  100% lint free, instantly!  Of course, management
didn't like that answer, but the metrics were on lint, not on
functionality.  (That was much later in the process.)

Ray