4 ms·

I'm not familiar with the workflow experience of Xerox PARC workstations. I am interested in novel and useful workflow experiences. Do you have sources that d

by daveguy 11y ago

I'm not familiar with the workflow experience of Xerox PARC workstations. I am interested in novel and useful workflow experiences. Do you have sources that describe the benefits of the experience? If it is based on personal experience, can you elaborate?

pjmlp 11y ago
My personal experience is based in Smalltalk VisualWorks and Oberon. Smalltalk, well being Smalltalk. Oberon being the product of Niklaus Wirth, after he learned Mesa/Cedar while at Xerox. That experience, coupled with lots of archaeological digging for old manuals and papers is how I got to learn about it. Basically Xerox had three workstation environments, Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar. All enjoying the fact of the workstation and OS blended into each other. The CLI was a REPL, so you had full access over the OS. Any public API could be accessed in the REPL, you could interact with running applications, all the same way. Also the REPLs were graphical with inline generation of data, so imagine something like Swift Playgrounds as the CLI. Lots of nice documents here: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox Filtered by language: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22smalltalk%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A... https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22lisp%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A... https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22cedar%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A...
- daveguy 11y ago
  Thank you for the clarification! I have worked with smalltalk (environment in which I learned OOP). I didn't realize that the default work environments in a Xerox PARC were REPL lisp, smalltalk or mesa (not familiar with mesa except as reference to mesa3d -- the same?). This sounds like an awesome environment. Mathematica doesn't really capture this either, not being integrated with the OS or third party applications, does it? Sounds like MS is trying to do this with PowerShell but with a poor interface compared to smalltalk or lisp (and probably less standardized). Did Xerox control all the software or mandate programming languages or interfaces?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Xerox controlled the whole stack, they invented it for their systems. So these workstations where an whole stack OS. You can read about their implementations on the links I provided before. Additionally, you can get the original Smalltalk-80 from from Stephane's web site. http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html This is a very ruft idea how it felt to use a Smalltalk workstation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxCJfayW-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxCJfayW-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPiMl8XUKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPiMl8XUKU The REPL was what is known in Smalltalk as transcript. Similarly the Interlisp-D workstation also had they own mixture of REPL and editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlN0hHLZL8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlN0hHLZL8c Some of the ideas that lived on the Lisp Machines afterwards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOysrxexTXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOysrxexTXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk Mesa was a memory safe system programming language created at Xerox, as an evolution from Extended Algol to replace BCPL. Niklaus Wirth based his Modula-2 design on it. Shortly thereafter they updated Mesa into Cedar, which added support for RC with local GC for cycle collection. The system then got called Mesa/Cedar. It allowed the same interactive experience as the other workstations, but using a GC enabled systems programming language. The REPL provided nice features, like auto-suggestion when a typo would cause a compilation failure. It is also probably the first graphical debugger for a strong typed language. Any OS API could be used on the REPL by typing modulename.procedure , which could use other OS APIs to get its input from different sources. An idea Wirth adopted into Oberon. You can see how all three environments looked like here: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/p004.htm http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/... And yes, Powershell alongside .NET is probably the closest we have in modern computers to those systems. Followed by Swift Playgrounds and AppleScript on Apple systems. Although Apple also provided similar experiences with Common Lisp, Hypercard and their NewtonScript and Dylan.
    - lispm 11y ago
      Personal historical favorite: MIT Lisp Machine screenshots from 1980: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/symbolics/LM-2/LM_Screen_Shots_Jun1980.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/symbolics/L...

by daveguy 11y ago

pjmlp 11y ago

My personal experience is based in Smalltalk VisualWorks and Oberon. Smalltalk, well being Smalltalk. Oberon being the product of Niklaus Wirth, after he learned Mesa/Cedar while at Xerox. That experience, coupled with lots of archaeological digging for old manuals and papers is how I got to learn about it. Basically Xerox had three workstation environments, Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar. All enjoying the fact of the workstation and OS blended into each other. The CLI was a REPL, so you had full access over the OS. Any public API could be accessed in the REPL, you could interact with running applications, all the same way. Also the REPLs were graphical with inline generation of data, so imagine something like Swift Playgrounds as the CLI. Lots of nice documents here: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox Filtered by language: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22smalltalk%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A... https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22lisp%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A... https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A%22cedar%22 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_xerox?and[]=subject%3A...

daveguy 11y ago
Thank you for the clarification! I have worked with smalltalk (environment in which I learned OOP). I didn't realize that the default work environments in a Xerox PARC were REPL lisp, smalltalk or mesa (not familiar with mesa except as reference to mesa3d -- the same?). This sounds like an awesome environment. Mathematica doesn't really capture this either, not being integrated with the OS or third party applications, does it? Sounds like MS is trying to do this with PowerShell but with a poor interface compared to smalltalk or lisp (and probably less standardized). Did Xerox control all the software or mandate programming languages or interfaces?
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Xerox controlled the whole stack, they invented it for their systems. So these workstations where an whole stack OS. You can read about their implementations on the links I provided before. Additionally, you can get the original Smalltalk-80 from from Stephane's web site. http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html This is a very ruft idea how it felt to use a Smalltalk workstation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxCJfayW-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxCJfayW-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPiMl8XUKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPiMl8XUKU The REPL was what is known in Smalltalk as transcript. Similarly the Interlisp-D workstation also had they own mixture of REPL and editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlN0hHLZL8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlN0hHLZL8c Some of the ideas that lived on the Lisp Machines afterwards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOysrxexTXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOysrxexTXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk Mesa was a memory safe system programming language created at Xerox, as an evolution from Extended Algol to replace BCPL. Niklaus Wirth based his Modula-2 design on it. Shortly thereafter they updated Mesa into Cedar, which added support for RC with local GC for cycle collection. The system then got called Mesa/Cedar. It allowed the same interactive experience as the other workstations, but using a GC enabled systems programming language. The REPL provided nice features, like auto-suggestion when a typo would cause a compilation failure. It is also probably the first graphical debugger for a strong typed language. Any OS API could be used on the REPL by typing modulename.procedure , which could use other OS APIs to get its input from different sources. An idea Wirth adopted into Oberon. You can see how all three environments looked like here: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/p004.htm http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/... And yes, Powershell alongside .NET is probably the closest we have in modern computers to those systems. Followed by Swift Playgrounds and AppleScript on Apple systems. Although Apple also provided similar experiences with Common Lisp, Hypercard and their NewtonScript and Dylan.
  - lispm 11y ago
    Personal historical favorite: MIT Lisp Machine screenshots from 1980: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/symbolics/LM-2/LM_Screen_Shots_Jun1980.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/symbolics/L...