# 09jun24 Software Lab. Alexander Burger                                                  Perfection is attained                                   not when there is nothing left to add                             but when there is nothing left to take away                                              (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)      The PicoLisp System      ===================      _PI_co Lisp is not _CO_mmon LispPicoLisp can be viewed from two different aspects: As a general purposeprogramming language, and a dedicated application server framework.(1) As a programming language, PicoLisp provides a 1-to-1 mapping of aclean and powerful Lisp derivate, to a simple and efficient virtualmachine. It supports persistent objects as a first class data type,resulting in a database system of Entity/Relation classes and aProlog-like query language tightly integrated into the system.The virtual machine was designed to be   Simple      The internal data structure should be as simple as possible. Only      one single data structure is used to build all higher level      constructs.   Unlimited      There are no limits imposed upon the language due to limitations      of the virtual machine architecture. That is, there is no upper      bound in symbol name length, number digit counts, or data      structure and buffer sizes, except for the total memory size of      the host machine.   Dynamic      Behavior should be as dynamic as possible ("run"-time vs.      "compile"-time). All decisions are delayed till runtime where      possible. This involves matters like memory management, dynamic      symbol binding, and late method binding.   Practical      PicoLisp is not just a toy of theoretical value. PicoLisp is used      since 1988 in actual application development, research and      production.The language inherits the major advantages of classical Lisp systemslike   * Dynamic data types and structures   * Formal equivalence of code and data   * Functional programming style   * An interactive environmentPicoLisp is very different from any other Lisp dialect. This is partlydue to the above design principles, and partly due to its longdevelopment history since 1984.You can download the latest release version athttps://software-lab.de/pil21.tgz(2) As an application server framework, PicoLisp provides for   NoSQL Database Management      Index trees      Object local indexes      Entity/Relation classes      Pilog (PicoLisp Prolog) queries      Multi-user synchronization      DB Garbage collection      Journaling, Replication   User Interface      Browser GUI      (X)HTML/CSS      XMLHttpRequest/JavaScript   Application Server      Process management      Process family communication      XML I/O      Import/export      User administration      Internationalization      Security      Object linkage      Postscript/PrintingPicoLisp is not an IDE. All program development in Software Lab. is doneusing the console, bash, vip (vi-style editor) and the Lisp interpreter.The only type of GUI supported for applications is through a browser viaHTML. This makes the client side completely platform independent. TheGUI is created dynamically. Though it uses JavaScript and XMLHttpRequestfor speed improvements, it is fully functional also without JavaScriptor CSS.The GUI is deeply integrated with - and generated dynamically from - theapplication's data model. Because the application logic runs on theserver, multiple users can view and modify the same database objectwithout conflicts, everyone seeing changes done by other users on herscreen immediately due to the internal process and databasesynchronization.PicoLisp is free software, and you are welcome to use and redistributeit under the conditions of the MIT/X11 License (see "COPYING").It is based on LLVM and compiles and runs on any 64-bit POSIX system.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Alexander Burger   Software Lab. / 7fach GmbH   Bahnhofstr. 24a, D-86462 Langweid   abu@software-lab.de,http://www.software-lab.de, +49 8230 5060