5 ms·

I think most programmers today wouldn't have heard about Lisp Machines. Unless some one describes it to us, we wouldn't even know what that experience even fel

by kamaal 8y ago

I think most programmers today wouldn't have heard about Lisp Machines. Unless some one describes it to us, we wouldn't even know what that experience even felt like.

pjmlp 8y ago
By all means, "Graphical Programming with Xerox Lisp" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4F6ioMKiqw&list=PL80581C8F8E916516 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4F6ioMKiqw&list=PL80581C8F8... "Symbolics Lisp Machine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk&t=28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk&t=28s "The Interlisp Programming Environment (1981)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328 "Interlisp-D Reference Manual Volume II: Environment" http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198510_Koto/3101273_Interlisp-D_Vol_2_Environment_Oct85.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198510_Koto/3...
- agumonkey 8y ago
  have you used pharo ? I quite ~loved the experience, and I wonder if lisp machines were similar in the feeling that you really can mold your system real time. Or if it was different.. (more possibilities, different idioms that changed the perspective)
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    I used Smalltalk/V at the university, a couple of years before Java sprung into existence. Pharo just to occasionally check how much it has changed since those days. Yes, Smalltalk does provide a similar experience to Lisp Machines. Also if you read Xerox papers about Mesa XDE and Mesa/Cedar, one the goals was to provide a developer experience similar to the Lisp and Smalltalk workstations in the context of a strong typed systems programming language.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      Thanks, I never bothered with MESA/Cedar.. because mesa reminds me of opengl linux libs .. enjoy the wat.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Basically the Lisp Machine is like booting a Laptop with Emacs as a OS? I mean not exactly, but mostly like that?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Not at all, that is an oversimplification. Lisp Machines allowed for multiple applications, the Emacs was only related to the REPL and text editing, aka Zmacs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmacs I don't use Emacs regularly any longer, but it used to lack the ability to embedded widgets or graphics on its REPL, one of the reasons why I used to be a XEmacs user instead. Back to Lisp Machine, you have to imagine that the whole OS is written in a mix of Assembly and Lisp, nothing else. Then the whole OS was exposed to the developer, as they were single user workstations. Imagine the ability to access any running application from the REPL and interact with it in some way, for example, reformat the selected image in the word processing application. As very basic example. Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. When an application would trap at any level, the debugger pane gets invoked and you are able to fix the error, followed by redoing the action that triggered the error. Also the OO system was much more powerful than what most OO programming languages are capable of. You had multiple inheritance, traits (aka protocols), aspects, contracts, multiple dispatch available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system)
    - jodrellblank 8y ago
      Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. Something I have always felt was a killer-feature of the Windows and Office platforms, and something the industry is moving away from. I never saw what you describe, but I'm sad to increasingly lose what interop we've had since the 1990s and 2000s in exchange for cross platform support, security of one kind or another, and silo'd cloud services. But then again, what you describe sounds worse not better. Like half "wow, malware playground", and half "I just wanted a nutcracker but all I have available is this hammer factory and the machine shop which built it". Would I see the past differently if I started there, then moved to this present? Would I see COM interop differently if I had started in a world of Apps with constrained interop based on a "share this content with a link" popups? Along with "if everything's top priority, nothing is", and "one size fits nobody very well", if a system is configurable for any task, does that mean it fits no task very well? A set of magnetic letters on a fridge door lets you rearrange the words to say whatever you want, but that doesn't make it "better than all novels".
rgrau 8y ago
This post is gold: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/XpvUwF2xKbk%5B101-125%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.lisp... As a fan of lisp and smalltalk myself, and as "one of the few programmers who has worked in CL commercially in this century", I take my emacs hacking sessions as the most similar experience to it I can have in a daily basis, but in the link I posted, Kent Pitman says: "I don't even find Emacs itself to be equivalently self-documenting and easy to get around in, much less the many systems that Emacs touches."
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I mention pharo below, there's a mooc published there https://siemenbaader.github.io/PharoMooc-website/ https://siemenbaader.github.io/PharoMooc-website/ I did the first version of that, it was easy to get pharo image and program to try it. I highly suggest playing with it. - feeling of a single language and semantics at all layers - very different OO feel than java/cpp, much more human, much more thoughtful
  - rgrau 8y ago
    Indeed Smalltalks (Squeak, Pharo, Amber) have so many "Aha!" moments waiting inside I just open them and start fiddling with the Class Browser (until I break the whole thing). 'Boolean>>ifTrue:' is just the gateway drug.
blihp 8y ago
Only to those who aren't inquisitive. There are several old promotional videos that have been put up on YouTube, old screenshots and brochures have been put up on web pages, there were the recent 'bringing back to life' videos and talks/demos by many of the people involved at the Computer History Museum etc. The information is there, you just need to look for it. Search on 'Lisp' along with 'Lisp Machine', 'LMI' or 'Symbolics'

by kamaal 8y ago

I think most programmers today wouldn't have heard about Lisp Machines. Unless some one describes it to us, we wouldn't even know what that experience even felt like.

pjmlp 8y ago

By all means, "Graphical Programming with Xerox Lisp" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4F6ioMKiqw&list=PL80581C8F8E916516 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4F6ioMKiqw&list=PL80581C8F8... "Symbolics Lisp Machine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk&t=28s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk&t=28s "The Interlisp Programming Environment (1981)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328 "Interlisp-D Reference Manual Volume II: Environment" http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198510_Koto/3101273_Interlisp-D_Vol_2_Environment_Oct85.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198510_Koto/3...

agumonkey 8y ago
have you used pharo ? I quite ~loved the experience, and I wonder if lisp machines were similar in the feeling that you really can mold your system real time. Or if it was different.. (more possibilities, different idioms that changed the perspective)
- pjmlp 8y ago
  I used Smalltalk/V at the university, a couple of years before Java sprung into existence. Pharo just to occasionally check how much it has changed since those days. Yes, Smalltalk does provide a similar experience to Lisp Machines. Also if you read Xerox papers about Mesa XDE and Mesa/Cedar, one the goals was to provide a developer experience similar to the Lisp and Smalltalk workstations in the context of a strong typed systems programming language.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Thanks, I never bothered with MESA/Cedar.. because mesa reminds me of opengl linux libs .. enjoy the wat.
kamaal 8y ago
Basically the Lisp Machine is like booting a Laptop with Emacs as a OS? I mean not exactly, but mostly like that?
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Not at all, that is an oversimplification. Lisp Machines allowed for multiple applications, the Emacs was only related to the REPL and text editing, aka Zmacs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zmacs I don't use Emacs regularly any longer, but it used to lack the ability to embedded widgets or graphics on its REPL, one of the reasons why I used to be a XEmacs user instead. Back to Lisp Machine, you have to imagine that the whole OS is written in a mix of Assembly and Lisp, nothing else. Then the whole OS was exposed to the developer, as they were single user workstations. Imagine the ability to access any running application from the REPL and interact with it in some way, for example, reformat the selected image in the word processing application. As very basic example. Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. When an application would trap at any level, the debugger pane gets invoked and you are able to fix the error, followed by redoing the action that triggered the error. Also the OO system was much more powerful than what most OO programming languages are capable of. You had multiple inheritance, traits (aka protocols), aspects, contracts, multiple dispatch available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system)
  - jodrellblank 8y ago
    Something that on modern systems is only kind of replicated with COM/.NET alongside PowerShell, and it fails short of what was possible. Something I have always felt was a killer-feature of the Windows and Office platforms, and something the industry is moving away from. I never saw what you describe, but I'm sad to increasingly lose what interop we've had since the 1990s and 2000s in exchange for cross platform support, security of one kind or another, and silo'd cloud services. But then again, what you describe sounds worse not better. Like half "wow, malware playground", and half "I just wanted a nutcracker but all I have available is this hammer factory and the machine shop which built it". Would I see the past differently if I started there, then moved to this present? Would I see COM interop differently if I had started in a world of Apps with constrained interop based on a "share this content with a link" popups? Along with "if everything's top priority, nothing is", and "one size fits nobody very well", if a system is configurable for any task, does that mean it fits no task very well? A set of magnetic letters on a fridge door lets you rearrange the words to say whatever you want, but that doesn't make it "better than all novels".

rgrau 8y ago

This post is gold: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/XpvUwF2xKbk%5B101-125%5D https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/comp.lang.lisp... As a fan of lisp and smalltalk myself, and as "one of the few programmers who has worked in CL commercially in this century", I take my emacs hacking sessions as the most similar experience to it I can have in a daily basis, but in the link I posted, Kent Pitman says: "I don't even find Emacs itself to be equivalently self-documenting and easy to get around in, much less the many systems that Emacs touches."

agumonkey 8y ago
I mention pharo below, there's a mooc published there https://siemenbaader.github.io/PharoMooc-website/ https://siemenbaader.github.io/PharoMooc-website/ I did the first version of that, it was easy to get pharo image and program to try it. I highly suggest playing with it. - feeling of a single language and semantics at all layers - very different OO feel than java/cpp, much more human, much more thoughtful
- rgrau 8y ago
  Indeed Smalltalks (Squeak, Pharo, Amber) have so many "Aha!" moments waiting inside I just open them and start fiddling with the Class Browser (until I break the whole thing). 'Boolean>>ifTrue:' is just the gateway drug.

blihp 8y ago

Only to those who aren't inquisitive. There are several old promotional videos that have been put up on YouTube, old screenshots and brochures have been put up on web pages, there were the recent 'bringing back to life' videos and talks/demos by many of the people involved at the Computer History Museum etc. The information is there, you just need to look for it. Search on 'Lisp' along with 'Lisp Machine', 'LMI' or 'Symbolics'