24 ms·

I have been paying attention, I've known that story for well over twenty years, and I fear I might have to listen to rehashes of the same damn old story at leas

by _0ffh 8y ago

I have been paying attention, I've known that story for well over twenty years, and I fear I might have to listen to rehashes of the same damn old story at least every couple of years for the rest of my life, thank you very much. What's irking me is that the older the story gets the more irrational and extreme the ongoing deification. I say if the UX and tooling where that godlike as some are wont to make out, you can easily have that without the need for an actual lisp machine, just port the damn software. I maintain that 90% of those who irrationally praise that old system this much did never even work a single hour with one of them, so where are they getting their delusions from? How would they know it's not just as inefficient and frustrating at times as any other system? They don't, but they just can't keep from creaming all over any forum where the LISP machine is mentioned at all. Darn I need my morning coffee, I'm cranky.

armitron 8y ago
How can you talk about irrationality when it's obvious that you've never worked on a Lisp Machine and are thus totally projecting and making up things? Then of course you accuse the Lisp advocates of suffering from what you so clearly represent. If you had a clue, even a minimal one, you would never write 'just port the damn software'. This statement - and your previous comments - portray fundamental ignorance of what you are trying to argue against. May I suggest further education - Lisp Machine emulators are widely available - so as to stop making a fool of yourself.
- _0ffh 8y ago
  "Lisp Machine emulators are widely available - so as to stop making a fool of yourself" Thank you for proving my point, which you didn't get. a: They were not successful, but should have been, and now it's too late. b: If anybody cared it wouldn't be too late for success. a: No see, somebody DID care! b: And still no success... qed
- rjsw 8y ago
  I have done a fair bit of work on the various Lisp Machine emulators and don't think that asking why the software wasn't ported to something else is a stupid question. The K-machine development was 'just porting the damn software' to a large extent.
lispm 8y ago
> just port the damn software. That's what Open Genera does. Symbolics wrote an emulator for the Ivory architecture, which allowed people to use much of the OS on a DEC Alpha under Unix. > I maintain that 90% of those who irrationally praise that old system this much did never even work a single hour with one of them Possibly true, though I have. I know both its pros and cons (and it conses a lot). > They don't, but they just can't keep from creaming all over any forum where the LISP machine is mentioned at all. Darn I need my morning coffee, I'm cranky. I think you have a point here. I think its useful to have alternative approaches preserved and some people have influenced by it and implemented slightly similar stuff on current software (see for example MCCLIM for Common Lisp, which is a portable reimplementation of some of the UI management and graphics substrate of the Symbolics Lisp Machine OS). It did not catch on, since much of that is very exotic and complex at the same time. But those have probably never had the opportunity to format a disk in Lisp, read a Unix tape via a Lispm tape drive or copy a file via anonymous FTP onto a Lispm. It's not the fault of the current generation - they haven't had the chance to actually work with such computers (since the whole thing was mostly dead after the early 90s) and all in all they were very rare (roughly 10000 Lisp Machines in various forms were built) and the whole experience was very expensive - thus only affordable to companies and well funded research. This makes it more mythical and mysterious. Then also the commercial systems have't been 'freed' yet - their source code is not available under an open source / free software license - only the old MIT code has been made available - but that is really ancient. It's the same with the old Lispm keyboards - the layout is cool, but using it for typing? Who has ever typed with the old mechanical keyboards from the 80s and would do that today? There are only a few...
- _0ffh 8y ago
  +1 for the very detailed and eminently reasonable answer! I wasn't aware (but probably should have) that a significant portion of the software is copyright encumbered because it was not officially legally abandoned. I think ideally the current copyright holders would release the source codes in question, both for reasons of preservation, and so that everyone gets the chance to explore these systems for themselves, on their own boxes at home.

by _0ffh 8y ago

armitron 8y ago

How can you talk about irrationality when it's obvious that you've never worked on a Lisp Machine and are thus totally projecting and making up things? Then of course you accuse the Lisp advocates of suffering from what you so clearly represent. If you had a clue, even a minimal one, you would never write 'just port the damn software'. This statement - and your previous comments - portray fundamental ignorance of what you are trying to argue against. May I suggest further education - Lisp Machine emulators are widely available - so as to stop making a fool of yourself.

_0ffh 8y ago
"Lisp Machine emulators are widely available - so as to stop making a fool of yourself" Thank you for proving my point, which you didn't get. a: They were not successful, but should have been, and now it's too late. b: If anybody cared it wouldn't be too late for success. a: No see, somebody DID care! b: And still no success... qed
rjsw 8y ago
I have done a fair bit of work on the various Lisp Machine emulators and don't think that asking why the software wasn't ported to something else is a stupid question. The K-machine development was 'just porting the damn software' to a large extent.

lispm 8y ago

> just port the damn software. That's what Open Genera does. Symbolics wrote an emulator for the Ivory architecture, which allowed people to use much of the OS on a DEC Alpha under Unix. > I maintain that 90% of those who irrationally praise that old system this much did never even work a single hour with one of them Possibly true, though I have. I know both its pros and cons (and it conses a lot). > They don't, but they just can't keep from creaming all over any forum where the LISP machine is mentioned at all. Darn I need my morning coffee, I'm cranky. I think you have a point here. I think its useful to have alternative approaches preserved and some people have influenced by it and implemented slightly similar stuff on current software (see for example MCCLIM for Common Lisp, which is a portable reimplementation of some of the UI management and graphics substrate of the Symbolics Lisp Machine OS). It did not catch on, since much of that is very exotic and complex at the same time. But those have probably never had the opportunity to format a disk in Lisp, read a Unix tape via a Lispm tape drive or copy a file via anonymous FTP onto a Lispm. It's not the fault of the current generation - they haven't had the chance to actually work with such computers (since the whole thing was mostly dead after the early 90s) and all in all they were very rare (roughly 10000 Lisp Machines in various forms were built) and the whole experience was very expensive - thus only affordable to companies and well funded research. This makes it more mythical and mysterious. Then also the commercial systems have't been 'freed' yet - their source code is not available under an open source / free software license - only the old MIT code has been made available - but that is really ancient. It's the same with the old Lispm keyboards - the layout is cool, but using it for typing? Who has ever typed with the old mechanical keyboards from the 80s and would do that today? There are only a few...

_0ffh 8y ago
+1 for the very detailed and eminently reasonable answer! I wasn't aware (but probably should have) that a significant portion of the software is copyright encumbered because it was not officially legally abandoned. I think ideally the current copyright holders would release the source codes in question, both for reasons of preservation, and so that everyone gets the chance to explore these systems for themselves, on their own boxes at home.