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Basically the Lisp Machine is like booting a Laptop with Emacs as a OS? I mean not exactly, but mostly like that?

by kamaal 8y ago

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".
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    All these concerns are understandable, but after reading a lot of lisp and non mainstream litterature (jitted OSes, ocaml compiler, lisp machines), I'd give lots of trust points to the thing described above. But I'd expect a lot of needs for security and encryption since those times had almost no troubles regarding this.
lispm 8y ago
given that GNU Emacs does not implement a file system, has no process scheduler, has no driver for Ethernet cards, doesn't have a driver for a framebuffer, ... the screen would be dark and there would be no i/O... whereas the Lisp Machine is a computer with a stack-oriented CPU running a relatively capable OS written in Lisp only (incl. disk driver, file system, NFS, DNS, SMTP, FTP, TELNET, graphics, processes, postscript printer support, users/groups/networks/sites, editor, graphics editor, file browser, process browser, printer dialog, screen shots, mouse handling, tape backups, cdrom reader, ...).

Basically the Lisp Machine is like booting a Laptop with Emacs as a OS? I mean not exactly, but mostly like that?

by 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?

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".
- agumonkey 8y ago
  All these concerns are understandable, but after reading a lot of lisp and non mainstream litterature (jitted OSes, ocaml compiler, lisp machines), I'd give lots of trust points to the thing described above. But I'd expect a lot of needs for security and encryption since those times had almost no troubles regarding this.

lispm 8y ago

given that GNU Emacs does not implement a file system, has no process scheduler, has no driver for Ethernet cards, doesn't have a driver for a framebuffer, ... the screen would be dark and there would be no i/O... whereas the Lisp Machine is a computer with a stack-oriented CPU running a relatively capable OS written in Lisp only (incl. disk driver, file system, NFS, DNS, SMTP, FTP, TELNET, graphics, processes, postscript printer support, users/groups/networks/sites, editor, graphics editor, file browser, process browser, printer dialog, screen shots, mouse handling, tape backups, cdrom reader, ...).