9 ms·

Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even

Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator running), and learn. That system lost, and it's never coming back, but you can learn from what they did well when building your own system. But when you have, don't complain about the inferiority of our systems. It may be true (I can't get the emulator running to find out), but it gets annoying pretty fast. Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better.

mordocai 10y ago
You act like I have the skill, time, and motivation to build my own system. It is perfectly valid to tell the creators of the systems you use that you'd would prefer them to be more like X.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I know that, but telling everybody who expresses any preference for any system that system X is obviously far superior is really annoying.
  - lispm 10y ago
    Nobody does that. But for certain areas this is true and you should not ignore that. Grady Booch once at an Eclipse conference: "For those of you looking at the future of development environments, I encourage you to go back and review some of the Xerox documentation for InterLisp-D."
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      ...Well, you do. And so do many other Lispers, for that matter. IIRC, I've been guilty of it myself.
      - lispm 10y ago
        I don't.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        We all do, to a more or lesser degree. Lispers, in particular, are prone to it. I do it, and I've seen you do it too. This isn't, by the way, a slight on you. Nor do I dislike you in any way. I do tend to argue with you a lot, but that's because I disagree with you, and I am of the firm belief that you can learn a lot by discussing subjects with people who disagree with you regarding them.
  - kirghiz 10y ago
    Repeatedly telling someone that they are annoying is in itself quite annoying. Any examples of your own lisp systems?
pjmlp 10y ago
Bret Victor, The Future of Programming https://vimeo.com/71278954 https://vimeo.com/71278954
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is... If you're saying I'm resistant to new ideas, perhaps, to some degree. My point was more that if you want to make people receptive to a new idea, slamming them as ignorant fools for not knowing about it already, or condescending to them for not immediately genuflecting before it isn't the best approach.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    The point being that we have seen the future like Bret puts it, and are to certain extent disappointed that the industry keeps doing left turns. Many C++ users are finally enjoying environments like Clion and incremental compilers, well this was a C++ environment in 1993: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk Built on top of Lucid Common Lisp infrastructure, as Lucid pivoted their business to C++. IBM had a similar one, that imported C++ into a database, offering a Smalltalk like development experience for C++, called VisualAge C++ Professional 4.0 http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_VAC_3.0 http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_VAC_3.0 So yeah, we are grey hair dogs disappointed how things evolve.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Fair enough. And it is irritating, I won't lie. We're too perf-obsessed for our own good. But complaining about it, or condescending the way many do, won't do any good: Either you're preaching to the choir, or you're irritating people, thus making them less likely to listen to you (sometimes both in one person, like me. But then, I took a while to come around on a lot of this stuff). If you want a future, build it. If you're already doing it, keep doing so, and find ways to win people over, not alienate them. By the way, almost none of this is aimed directly at you...
lispm 10y ago
You would not know that GNU Emacs has a shitty UI, if people would not tell you. > Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better. It's not easy, but people are/were doing it: CMUCL, SBCL, McCLIM, Mezzano, the commercial Lisp systems like LispWorks and Allegro CL, ... all of them were/are efforts to bring some of the ideas/features. People were even developing emulators for the various Lisp Machines to make some of the old software runnable. MIT open sourced their original Lisp Machine software. One of the most important things currently is to preserve the history of these and other machines / operating systems / applications. So that they are not lost and people can study them and learn. Lots of stuff is already lost.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I was plenty aware that Emacs had a crummy UI. I just don't think it matters as much as you do. I said as much. >It's not easy, but people are/were doing it... That's actually great. I'm tremendously excited by those systems. I tend to prefer Scheme to CL (less cruft), but I'm excited all the same. Those systems and environments are really cool. Although it is telling that SLIME (which is excellent, by the way) is one of the most popular ways to write Lisp code.
  - lispm 10y ago
    > I just don't think it matters as much as you do. I said as much. There is a lot of software out there which needs powerful and/or different IDEs to be written. > Although it is telling that SLIME (which is excellent, by the way) is one of the most popular ways to write Lisp code. Guess where the inspiration for some of the SLIME features is coming from... Slime also does many cool new things, but it is still missing a lot of features and usability from the old environments. Part of the reason is GNU Emacs. It is what it is: a programmable editor with zillions of features. But its base, its UI, its interaction model, its integration idea is limiting in many ways. Many of the defining/leading IDEs were very different: Smalltalk 80, Interlisp-D, Symbolics Genera, ... Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Hypercard, ... NeXT ..., IntelliJ, ... (and a lot of others)
    - 10y ago
iterrogo 10y ago
> That system lost, and it's never coming back There's no reason it can't come back. It requires a massive amount of programming work and possibly new hardware but it's definitely possible and people are already working towards it. It's actually quite possible to build upon it and even surpass it.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  People are working on new Lisp-based systems (which is awesome!) But Symbolics systems will never come back, and it's unlikely that any of these systems will gain traction in a world where Unix dominates. ...Unless, of course, one of the popular embedded or mobile systems companies (Apple, etc.) Suddenly rewrote everything in lisp, and forced all 3rd-party devs to do the same, creating a massive market only reachable by Lisp programmers. What a wonderful dream.
  - lispm 10y ago
    Apple did that once upon a time, while Steve Jobs wasn't there. In a 'perfect' world you would use an iPhone which runs a Lisp OS. Before the iPhone and before the Newton MessagePad, Apple had an ARM-based Newton-like machine with really really tiny hardware (roughly 20 Mhz ARM CPU, around 1 MB RAM, a few MB ROM) running a real Lisp OS and had it almost made a product. Almost...
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      That would have been pretty cool.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      Jobs' Apple would never allow such a product. A user programmable machine for which people could release software without paying Apple a cut? Zero chance of that getting off the ground, for the same reason that Hypercard had to die. http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568
      - 10y ago

mordocai 10y ago

You act like I have the skill, time, and motivation to build my own system. It is perfectly valid to tell the creators of the systems you use that you'd would prefer them to be more like X.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I know that, but telling everybody who expresses any preference for any system that system X is obviously far superior is really annoying.
- lispm 10y ago
  Nobody does that. But for certain areas this is true and you should not ignore that. Grady Booch once at an Eclipse conference: "For those of you looking at the future of development environments, I encourage you to go back and review some of the Xerox documentation for InterLisp-D."
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    ...Well, you do. And so do many other Lispers, for that matter. IIRC, I've been guilty of it myself.
    - lispm 10y ago
      I don't.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        We all do, to a more or lesser degree. Lispers, in particular, are prone to it. I do it, and I've seen you do it too. This isn't, by the way, a slight on you. Nor do I dislike you in any way. I do tend to argue with you a lot, but that's because I disagree with you, and I am of the firm belief that you can learn a lot by discussing subjects with people who disagree with you regarding them.
- kirghiz 10y ago
  Repeatedly telling someone that they are annoying is in itself quite annoying. Any examples of your own lisp systems?

pjmlp 10y ago

Bret Victor, The Future of Programming https://vimeo.com/71278954 https://vimeo.com/71278954

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I'm not sure what your point is... If you're saying I'm resistant to new ideas, perhaps, to some degree. My point was more that if you want to make people receptive to a new idea, slamming them as ignorant fools for not knowing about it already, or condescending to them for not immediately genuflecting before it isn't the best approach.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The point being that we have seen the future like Bret puts it, and are to certain extent disappointed that the industry keeps doing left turns. Many C++ users are finally enjoying environments like Clion and incremental compilers, well this was a C++ environment in 1993: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk Built on top of Lucid Common Lisp infrastructure, as Lucid pivoted their business to C++. IBM had a similar one, that imported C++ into a database, offering a Smalltalk like development experience for C++, called VisualAge C++ Professional 4.0 http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_VAC_3.0 http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_VAC_3.0 So yeah, we are grey hair dogs disappointed how things evolve.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Fair enough. And it is irritating, I won't lie. We're too perf-obsessed for our own good. But complaining about it, or condescending the way many do, won't do any good: Either you're preaching to the choir, or you're irritating people, thus making them less likely to listen to you (sometimes both in one person, like me. But then, I took a while to come around on a lot of this stuff). If you want a future, build it. If you're already doing it, keep doing so, and find ways to win people over, not alienate them. By the way, almost none of this is aimed directly at you...

lispm 10y ago

You would not know that GNU Emacs has a shitty UI, if people would not tell you. > Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better. It's not easy, but people are/were doing it: CMUCL, SBCL, McCLIM, Mezzano, the commercial Lisp systems like LispWorks and Allegro CL, ... all of them were/are efforts to bring some of the ideas/features. People were even developing emulators for the various Lisp Machines to make some of the old software runnable. MIT open sourced their original Lisp Machine software. One of the most important things currently is to preserve the history of these and other machines / operating systems / applications. So that they are not lost and people can study them and learn. Lots of stuff is already lost.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I was plenty aware that Emacs had a crummy UI. I just don't think it matters as much as you do. I said as much. >It's not easy, but people are/were doing it... That's actually great. I'm tremendously excited by those systems. I tend to prefer Scheme to CL (less cruft), but I'm excited all the same. Those systems and environments are really cool. Although it is telling that SLIME (which is excellent, by the way) is one of the most popular ways to write Lisp code.
- lispm 10y ago
  > I just don't think it matters as much as you do. I said as much. There is a lot of software out there which needs powerful and/or different IDEs to be written. > Although it is telling that SLIME (which is excellent, by the way) is one of the most popular ways to write Lisp code. Guess where the inspiration for some of the SLIME features is coming from... Slime also does many cool new things, but it is still missing a lot of features and usability from the old environments. Part of the reason is GNU Emacs. It is what it is: a programmable editor with zillions of features. But its base, its UI, its interaction model, its integration idea is limiting in many ways. Many of the defining/leading IDEs were very different: Smalltalk 80, Interlisp-D, Symbolics Genera, ... Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Hypercard, ... NeXT ..., IntelliJ, ... (and a lot of others)
  - 10y ago

iterrogo 10y ago

> That system lost, and it's never coming back There's no reason it can't come back. It requires a massive amount of programming work and possibly new hardware but it's definitely possible and people are already working towards it. It's actually quite possible to build upon it and even surpass it.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
People are working on new Lisp-based systems (which is awesome!) But Symbolics systems will never come back, and it's unlikely that any of these systems will gain traction in a world where Unix dominates. ...Unless, of course, one of the popular embedded or mobile systems companies (Apple, etc.) Suddenly rewrote everything in lisp, and forced all 3rd-party devs to do the same, creating a massive market only reachable by Lisp programmers. What a wonderful dream.
- lispm 10y ago
  Apple did that once upon a time, while Steve Jobs wasn't there. In a 'perfect' world you would use an iPhone which runs a Lisp OS. Before the iPhone and before the Newton MessagePad, Apple had an ARM-based Newton-like machine with really really tiny hardware (roughly 20 Mhz ARM CPU, around 1 MB RAM, a few MB ROM) running a real Lisp OS and had it almost made a product. Almost...
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    That would have been pretty cool.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    Jobs' Apple would never allow such a product. A user programmable machine for which people could release software without paying Apple a cut? Zero chance of that getting off the ground, for the same reason that Hypercard had to die. http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568
    - 10y ago