Multics Emacs (Prose and Cons)
Bernard S. Greenberg · 1980
This paper addresses the choice of Lisp as the implementation language, and its consequences, including some of the implementation issues. The detailed history of Multics Emacs, its system-level design considerations, and its impact on Multics and its user community are discussed in [Greenberg]. One of the immediate and profound consequences of this choice has been to assert Lisp's adequacy, indeed, superiority, as a full-fledged systems and applications programming language. Multics Emacs has established an awareness of Lisp in quarters where the term had never been heard.