3 ms·
I have a Symbolics XL1200 that still works (at least, it worked the last time I turned it on, which was a few years ago). I'd be happy to demo it at YC sometim
by ScottBurson 16y ago
I have a Symbolics XL1200 that still works (at least, it worked the last time I turned it on, which was a few years ago). I'd be happy to demo it at YC sometime.
It was a fun environment to work in. Although the hardware was very slow by modern standards, the environment was designed to maximize hacker productivity. For example, you didn't have to run a program under the debugger to debug it -- the debugger was always there. Any program that hit an error would drop you into the debugger. One keystroke would then take you to the source for the current function. You could change that function, recompile it, and restart from the point where the function was called.
The environment was completely open; there was no access control of any kind. There was also only a single address space. Did that make it crash-prone? Remarkably, no. The hardware tagging and bounds checking kept programs from stepping on objects they didn't own. Of course such a design would never survive outside of a research lab, but it made it amazingly easy to hack almost anything in the system.
- daeken 16y agoI don't know that I'd agree that it wouldn't survive outside of research. In recent years, there's been a huge push for pure-managed operating systems, where everything runs in one address space and depends on the compiler to ensure security and reliability. While no such systems are in practice (to my knowledge), the potential is incredible. We'll see how it pans out in the next few years. (Full disclosure: I started such an OS, Renraku, so I have a bit of a vested interest in the success of such ideas)
- joe_bleau 16y agoWhat about IBM's OS/400? http://users.snip.net/~gbooker/AS400/ibm.htm http://users.snip.net/~gbooker/AS400/ibm.htm
- hga 16y agoIndeed, OS/400 is just wonderfully advanced under the hood. Get one of the cheap used copies of this book for a lot more: http://www.amazon.com/Inside-AS-400-Frank-Soltis/dp/1882419669/ http://www.amazon.com/Inside-AS-400-Frank-Soltis/dp/18824196...
- sedachv 16y agoHi Scott, didn't see this comment before I posted mine (take a look at it if you have the time). Thank you for writing Zeta-C and proving the concept of reasonable C->Lisp compilation, and for making the code public domain.
- ScottBurson 16y agoYou're welcome. I hope it makes for an interesting curiosity -- I'm not sure it can be much more at this point :-)