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> 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

> 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
    - setpatchaddress 10y ago
      If we limit our perspective to the duration of Jobs's lifetime, the Apple I, II, III, and the entire Macintosh line never required a tithe to Apple for releasing software. (You can argue about the cost of developer tools / the developer program for the Mac, but you'd be wrong, since (a) those were never profitable for Apple and (b) people could and did use third party development tools.) HyperCard development floundered before Steve came back partly because of bad management decisions and partly because it required a total ground-up rewrite to bring it up to even 1988's graphic standards (it was obsolete pretty much as soon as it was released, thanks to the appearance of the Macintosh II, which supported larger screens and RGB color).
      - duncan_bayne 10y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is? Dead is dead, even if it's just been left to die instead of being enhanced or re-released. Re. not requiring a tithe to Apple, it's significant that their most popular OS (by orders of magnitude?): * requires a tithe * is not user programmable
        mikelevins 10y ago
        Well, but you initially said that HyperCard "had to die", presumably because it was user-programmable. You seem to be implying that Apple had a conscious policy of opposing user programming. That definitely was not the case at the time HyperCard was being developed. I know because I was there. I even worked on the HyperCard team for a while. HyperCard's troubles had nothing to do with an Apple policy against user programmability, and everything to do with the fact that management couldn't figure out how to make it into a product that paid for itself. If you want to argue that Apple has a policy against user programming now, well, maybe they do. I don't know. The last time I worked there was in the 1990s. But they didn't have any such policy when HyperCard was being shipped.
      - mikelevins 10y ago
        "Obsolete" is overstating it. You could do a lot with HyperCard. People did. Apple management started talking about cutting it pretty much immediately. It didn't directly generate any revenue--Apple gave it away for free. It didn't fit into any familiar product category. It wasn't on anybody's list of must-have features. Basically, Apple management didn't understand what it was or why it existed. Apple's programmers and other makers were an entirely different matter. They used it for all sorts of things. So did third-party developers. So did people who discovered how to make software through working with HyperCard. Projects sprouted in Apple that either extended HyperCard or implemented new software in the same spirit with expanded capabilities--but all those projects had the same problem as HyperCard: management didn't see what they were supposed to be for. Furthermore, the other projects didn't benefit from Apple management's promise to Bill Atkinson that HyperCard would be given away to Apple customers. HyperCard's days were numbered from the beginning; that much is true. But to call it "obsolete" from the beginning misunderstands a lot.
  - mycall 10y ago
    What was it called?
    - lispm 10y ago
      The second Lisp OS at Apple was called Bauhaus.
      - setpatchaddress 10y ago
        Do you have any more information on this? I've never heard of it.
        lispm 10y ago
        http://lispm.de/lisp-based-newton-os http://lispm.de/lisp-based-newton-os
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        ...You should probably tell people if you cite yourself.
        lispm 10y ago
        What's your problem exactly?
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        It's not a problem, really, I just think it's a good idea to tell people if you're citing your own pages, in general. It's by no means awful to do so, but it's better to let people know, so they don't think that your claim is corroborated by an external source when it isn't. If you think I have a problem with you, or something, I don't. So don't worry about it.
        10y ago
  - gumby 10y ago
    There was Dylan
    - lispm 10y ago
      The early versions of that were used for the Lisp OS - actually more than one. As usual, the IDE was implemented in Common Lisp.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        Honestly, from the look of it, I'd like earlier versions of Dylan better than the language we ended up with. I never really liked the non-sexpr syntax. But that's just me. The IDE was really written in CL? Huh. I'd have thought that they would have gone the self-hosting route.
        lispm 10y ago
        > But that's just me. No, it's not just you. Most Lisper thought that way. But the target weren't Lisp developers, it were C++/Apple Pascal developers. Basically similar purposes which Java was designed for: general 'mainstream' application/OS developers from mobile systems upwards. Management did not think that an s-expression-based syntax would be a success with developers used to use Pascal, C and C++. > The IDE was really written in CL? Huh. I'd have thought that they would have gone the self-hosting route. The new language was emerging and targeting the new hardware platforms. You can think of it that it was similar with the Playstation games from Naughty Dog - for example Crash Bandicoot. The platform for the software was the Game Object Oriented Lisp on Playstation and the development environment were desktop computers running and IDE based on Allegro Common Lisp. The dev environment were Macs. The developers were often Lisper and Apple bought the technology and the people. Even the later product version development environment 'Newton Toolkit' was originally developed in Common Lisp. There were stranger things then. I once saw a version of Microsoft Word for Macintosh on a developer CD, written in Common Lisp. It was a relatively sophisticated User Interface mockup. It looked like the real MS Word for Mac, but lacked much of the functionality. But when you looked at the application file on the bit level, you could see that it was a Macintosh Common Lisp runtime/image. It was written by or for Microsoft. Long ago.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Well they are actually doing it, but the UNIX crowd is so inflated that most mobile OSes use a UNIX kernel that they don't see it coming. Hint, for Swift, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript, Android, Dart, .NET, the kernel doesn't matter at all from the API surface point of view. And I am only listing the official mobile OS SDK languages being forced on 3rd-party devs as you say.

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
  - setpatchaddress 10y ago
    If we limit our perspective to the duration of Jobs's lifetime, the Apple I, II, III, and the entire Macintosh line never required a tithe to Apple for releasing software. (You can argue about the cost of developer tools / the developer program for the Mac, but you'd be wrong, since (a) those were never profitable for Apple and (b) people could and did use third party development tools.) HyperCard development floundered before Steve came back partly because of bad management decisions and partly because it required a total ground-up rewrite to bring it up to even 1988's graphic standards (it was obsolete pretty much as soon as it was released, thanks to the appearance of the Macintosh II, which supported larger screens and RGB color).
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is? Dead is dead, even if it's just been left to die instead of being enhanced or re-released. Re. not requiring a tithe to Apple, it's significant that their most popular OS (by orders of magnitude?): * requires a tithe * is not user programmable
      - mikelevins 10y ago
        Well, but you initially said that HyperCard "had to die", presumably because it was user-programmable. You seem to be implying that Apple had a conscious policy of opposing user programming. That definitely was not the case at the time HyperCard was being developed. I know because I was there. I even worked on the HyperCard team for a while. HyperCard's troubles had nothing to do with an Apple policy against user programmability, and everything to do with the fact that management couldn't figure out how to make it into a product that paid for itself. If you want to argue that Apple has a policy against user programming now, well, maybe they do. I don't know. The last time I worked there was in the 1990s. But they didn't have any such policy when HyperCard was being shipped.
    - mikelevins 10y ago
      "Obsolete" is overstating it. You could do a lot with HyperCard. People did. Apple management started talking about cutting it pretty much immediately. It didn't directly generate any revenue--Apple gave it away for free. It didn't fit into any familiar product category. It wasn't on anybody's list of must-have features. Basically, Apple management didn't understand what it was or why it existed. Apple's programmers and other makers were an entirely different matter. They used it for all sorts of things. So did third-party developers. So did people who discovered how to make software through working with HyperCard. Projects sprouted in Apple that either extended HyperCard or implemented new software in the same spirit with expanded capabilities--but all those projects had the same problem as HyperCard: management didn't see what they were supposed to be for. Furthermore, the other projects didn't benefit from Apple management's promise to Bill Atkinson that HyperCard would be given away to Apple customers. HyperCard's days were numbered from the beginning; that much is true. But to call it "obsolete" from the beginning misunderstands a lot.
- mycall 10y ago
  What was it called?
  - lispm 10y ago
    The second Lisp OS at Apple was called Bauhaus.
    - setpatchaddress 10y ago
      Do you have any more information on this? I've never heard of it.
      - lispm 10y ago
        http://lispm.de/lisp-based-newton-os http://lispm.de/lisp-based-newton-os
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        ...You should probably tell people if you cite yourself.
        lispm 10y ago
        What's your problem exactly?
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        It's not a problem, really, I just think it's a good idea to tell people if you're citing your own pages, in general. It's by no means awful to do so, but it's better to let people know, so they don't think that your claim is corroborated by an external source when it isn't. If you think I have a problem with you, or something, I don't. So don't worry about it.
        10y ago
- gumby 10y ago
  There was Dylan
  - lispm 10y ago
    The early versions of that were used for the Lisp OS - actually more than one. As usual, the IDE was implemented in Common Lisp.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Honestly, from the look of it, I'd like earlier versions of Dylan better than the language we ended up with. I never really liked the non-sexpr syntax. But that's just me. The IDE was really written in CL? Huh. I'd have thought that they would have gone the self-hosting route.
      - lispm 10y ago
        > But that's just me. No, it's not just you. Most Lisper thought that way. But the target weren't Lisp developers, it were C++/Apple Pascal developers. Basically similar purposes which Java was designed for: general 'mainstream' application/OS developers from mobile systems upwards. Management did not think that an s-expression-based syntax would be a success with developers used to use Pascal, C and C++. > The IDE was really written in CL? Huh. I'd have thought that they would have gone the self-hosting route. The new language was emerging and targeting the new hardware platforms. You can think of it that it was similar with the Playstation games from Naughty Dog - for example Crash Bandicoot. The platform for the software was the Game Object Oriented Lisp on Playstation and the development environment were desktop computers running and IDE based on Allegro Common Lisp. The dev environment were Macs. The developers were often Lisper and Apple bought the technology and the people. Even the later product version development environment 'Newton Toolkit' was originally developed in Common Lisp. There were stranger things then. I once saw a version of Microsoft Word for Macintosh on a developer CD, written in Common Lisp. It was a relatively sophisticated User Interface mockup. It looked like the real MS Word for Mac, but lacked much of the functionality. But when you looked at the application file on the bit level, you could see that it was a Macintosh Common Lisp runtime/image. It was written by or for Microsoft. Long ago.
pjmlp 10y ago
Well they are actually doing it, but the UNIX crowd is so inflated that most mobile OSes use a UNIX kernel that they don't see it coming. Hint, for Swift, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript, Android, Dart, .NET, the kernel doesn't matter at all from the API surface point of view. And I am only listing the official mobile OS SDK languages being forced on 3rd-party devs as you say.