6 ms·

Interface Builder's Alternative Lisp Timeline (2013)

125 points by kick 7y ago

robto 7y ago
This reminds me a bit of hyperfiddle[0], which I've looked at a few times but never really explored. I know the author (dustingetz) hangs out around here, and I wonder if any of this interface builder stuff was prior art. In any case, I wish we had more tools for interactivity these days. I use emacs and it's given me a taste for what's possible, and I'm excited to see Guix[1] mature because it has fantastic sympathies with emacs. But it seems destined to be niche, even though it's such a wonderful vision of what computing could be. [0]http://www.hyperfiddle.net/ http://www.hyperfiddle.net/ [1]https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Great write up. Denny’s company ExperTelligence sold a product that I wrote in Lisp. He got Apple to pay for a full page ad in Scientific American for my product. He was really a lot of fun to work with.
pcurve 7y ago
that video was fascinating and depressing to watch at the same time. I know it's not apple to apple comparison, but I feel like 30 years of computer progress should've put us in better place in terms of ease of app dev.
- lsh 7y ago
  I felt the same way. I'm mucking about with Netbeans GUI builder with Clojure integration and it feels like such a hack.
- em-bee 7y ago
  i am reminded of this every time i work with lisp or smalltalk. it feels like we barely made any progress since half a century ago. at best rust is a form of progress, and maybe pure functional programming (which lisp isn't), although the latter feels more like an exploration of boundaries (how pure can we make functional programming) rather than a technological advancement that actually helps us write better code.
  - 0x445442 7y ago
    I'm with the Raskins, the problems derive from interacting with computers via applications. This may or may not be at the forefront of your mind but your fondness of Lisp and Smalltalk systems supports my claim. Other systems such as Oberon fall into this camp but I would also include early PC systems like the Commodore 64 and DOS machines, even though they loaded individual applications. The commonality with these systems is the somewhat ubiquitous interface. I think this is why power users love the command line. These HCIs reduce the cognitive load of the application model where there are wildly disparate UIs to deal with on a continual basis. The growth of "web apps" has made this exponentially worse on the user because they're not bound by widget tool kits. I also see modern markers to support the claim. From what I understand, in China a huge amount of activity on smartphones that we would conduct through various apps, they conduct through WeChat and WeChat bots. They do this because it's more convenient and my claim is this is the normie's equivalent of attempting to push all their computing needs into Emacs.
    - scroot 7y ago
      It is absolutely nuts that we don't have a greater diversity of computing platforms (as we did in 80s 90s) considering we have such widely adopted standards today that overcome the "compatibility" problems. There's fertile ground for exploring more Smalltalk/Oberon/Hypercard/Lisp-machine like computing systems, with the confidence that they will be able to interact in a meaningful way with the outside world. Unfortunately, Computer Science continues to train people in Unix.
      - 0x445442 7y ago
        > It is absolutely nuts that we don't have a greater diversity of computing platforms (as we did in 80s 90s) I'm seeing signs of a possible resurgence here with the reduced cost of PCBs, FPGAs and the like along with the increased approach-ability to the space.
- Tistel 7y ago
  I feel the same way when I watch Doug Engelbart‘s “mother of all demos” video: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/ https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/ It does seem like we found all the low hanging fruit very early and if we are being honest with ourselves have not discovered much in the way of profound ideas since. But in terms the video here, if you have been around the UI space since desktop apps and are familiar with modern FE frameworks it does seem like we have gone backwards in many ways.
lispm 7y ago
The video shows an early Interface Builder written in Lisp. It runs on a Lisp Machine board for the Mac II range: the TI MicroExplorer. That was a Nubus board with TI's Lisp chip. The Lisp system was originally developed at MIT and then by LMI. TI had a license and developed their own range of machines and the software for it for a few years. Beginning of the AI winter TI closed that business. The TI Lisp chip was a 32Bit microprocessor designed to run Lisp applications in compact computers. Earlier Lisp Machines were much larger. The Lisp Machine inside the Mac had an interface to the Mac OS, so that one could write Lisp applications on the MicroExplorer with Mac-like user interfaces. The software was probably already written in Common Lisp (or ZetaLisp). It was also ported to the Mac using Common Lisp directly on the MacOS, without needing a Lisp Machine board. Earlier versions actually originated on the Mac and were written in LeLisp, a french Lisp dialect.
- gdubs 7y ago
  This comment, and the parent post are perhaps my favorite HN type of content. Dylan [1] the language underpinning the Newton was also a kind of LISP. Fairly close timeframe as well. I wonder what the overlap was there; would be interesting to track the lineage of the LISP contingent at Apple. I would imagine Alan Kay would have some overlap with those folks as well. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language)
  - lispm 7y ago
    Dylan was used in early prototypes of Newton-like systems and an early Newton. Dylan was a Lisp-derived language (originally with a Lisp-like syntax), mostly developed in Macintosh Common Lisp and itself. The released Newton MessagePad product used C++ and NewtonScript (because of extremely small RAMs of just 640kb). Apple developed lots of new stuff in their Advanced Technology Group (ATG), which used Lisp in many projects. Lisp was used for Dylan, but even the prototype for the NewtonScript development environment was written in Macintosh Common Lisp - and then released in a C+ version. Alan Kay was there, but Alan was more interested in Smalltalk projects, I'd guess. But one driving force for Lisp at Apple was Larry Tesler ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler ), who also worked with Smalltalk at Xerox Parc. See here: http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-dylan/book.annotated/foreword.html http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-dylan/book.annotated/foreword.ht...
QuamStiver 7y ago
Nice timeline! As the author of “Action!”, I’ve mused over the years at the poor quality of interface tools / environments. I’m happy to say that Apple is on to something with “SwiftUI’. They have completely rethought out a declarative UI, kept it quite interactive, and made it much easier to build quality IOS applications.
oracle2025 7y ago
Most of the currently popular frameworks follow the pattern of organizations that make the case that "Designers" and "Programmers" need to be strictly separated.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Interfaces should be strictly separated from the internal application code, with generic layers between them. To do it otherwise means ending up with a "big ball of mud" style app, that cannot have its interface redesigned in any way other than by refactoring it completely.

125 points by kick 7y ago

This reminds me a bit of hyperfiddle[0], which I've looked at a few times but never really explored. I know the author (dustingetz) hangs out around here, and I wonder if any of this interface builder stuff was prior art. In any case, I wish we had more tools for interactivity these days. I use emacs and it's given me a taste for what's possible, and I'm excited to see Guix[1] mature because it has fantastic sympathies with emacs. But it seems destined to be niche, even though it's such a wonderful vision of what computing could be. [0]http://www.hyperfiddle.net/ http://www.hyperfiddle.net/ [1]https://guix.gnu.org/ https://guix.gnu.org/

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Great write up. Denny’s company ExperTelligence sold a product that I wrote in Lisp. He got Apple to pay for a full page ad in Scientific American for my product. He was really a lot of fun to work with.

pcurve 7y ago

that video was fascinating and depressing to watch at the same time. I know it's not apple to apple comparison, but I feel like 30 years of computer progress should've put us in better place in terms of ease of app dev.

lsh 7y ago
I felt the same way. I'm mucking about with Netbeans GUI builder with Clojure integration and it feels like such a hack.
em-bee 7y ago
i am reminded of this every time i work with lisp or smalltalk. it feels like we barely made any progress since half a century ago. at best rust is a form of progress, and maybe pure functional programming (which lisp isn't), although the latter feels more like an exploration of boundaries (how pure can we make functional programming) rather than a technological advancement that actually helps us write better code.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  I'm with the Raskins, the problems derive from interacting with computers via applications. This may or may not be at the forefront of your mind but your fondness of Lisp and Smalltalk systems supports my claim. Other systems such as Oberon fall into this camp but I would also include early PC systems like the Commodore 64 and DOS machines, even though they loaded individual applications. The commonality with these systems is the somewhat ubiquitous interface. I think this is why power users love the command line. These HCIs reduce the cognitive load of the application model where there are wildly disparate UIs to deal with on a continual basis. The growth of "web apps" has made this exponentially worse on the user because they're not bound by widget tool kits. I also see modern markers to support the claim. From what I understand, in China a huge amount of activity on smartphones that we would conduct through various apps, they conduct through WeChat and WeChat bots. They do this because it's more convenient and my claim is this is the normie's equivalent of attempting to push all their computing needs into Emacs.
  - scroot 7y ago
    It is absolutely nuts that we don't have a greater diversity of computing platforms (as we did in 80s 90s) considering we have such widely adopted standards today that overcome the "compatibility" problems. There's fertile ground for exploring more Smalltalk/Oberon/Hypercard/Lisp-machine like computing systems, with the confidence that they will be able to interact in a meaningful way with the outside world. Unfortunately, Computer Science continues to train people in Unix.
    - 0x445442 7y ago
      > It is absolutely nuts that we don't have a greater diversity of computing platforms (as we did in 80s 90s) I'm seeing signs of a possible resurgence here with the reduced cost of PCBs, FPGAs and the like along with the increased approach-ability to the space.
Tistel 7y ago
I feel the same way when I watch Doug Engelbart‘s “mother of all demos” video: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/ https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/ It does seem like we found all the low hanging fruit very early and if we are being honest with ourselves have not discovered much in the way of profound ideas since. But in terms the video here, if you have been around the UI space since desktop apps and are familiar with modern FE frameworks it does seem like we have gone backwards in many ways.

lispm 7y ago

The video shows an early Interface Builder written in Lisp. It runs on a Lisp Machine board for the Mac II range: the TI MicroExplorer. That was a Nubus board with TI's Lisp chip. The Lisp system was originally developed at MIT and then by LMI. TI had a license and developed their own range of machines and the software for it for a few years. Beginning of the AI winter TI closed that business. The TI Lisp chip was a 32Bit microprocessor designed to run Lisp applications in compact computers. Earlier Lisp Machines were much larger. The Lisp Machine inside the Mac had an interface to the Mac OS, so that one could write Lisp applications on the MicroExplorer with Mac-like user interfaces. The software was probably already written in Common Lisp (or ZetaLisp). It was also ported to the Mac using Common Lisp directly on the MacOS, without needing a Lisp Machine board. Earlier versions actually originated on the Mac and were written in LeLisp, a french Lisp dialect.

gdubs 7y ago
This comment, and the parent post are perhaps my favorite HN type of content. Dylan [1] the language underpinning the Newton was also a kind of LISP. Fairly close timeframe as well. I wonder what the overlap was there; would be interesting to track the lineage of the LISP contingent at Apple. I would imagine Alan Kay would have some overlap with those folks as well. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language)
- lispm 7y ago
  Dylan was used in early prototypes of Newton-like systems and an early Newton. Dylan was a Lisp-derived language (originally with a Lisp-like syntax), mostly developed in Macintosh Common Lisp and itself. The released Newton MessagePad product used C++ and NewtonScript (because of extremely small RAMs of just 640kb). Apple developed lots of new stuff in their Advanced Technology Group (ATG), which used Lisp in many projects. Lisp was used for Dylan, but even the prototype for the NewtonScript development environment was written in Macintosh Common Lisp - and then released in a C+ version. Alan Kay was there, but Alan was more interested in Smalltalk projects, I'd guess. But one driving force for Lisp at Apple was Larry Tesler ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler ), who also worked with Smalltalk at Xerox Parc. See here: http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-dylan/book.annotated/foreword.html http://lispm.de/docs/prefix-dylan/book.annotated/foreword.ht...

QuamStiver 7y ago

Nice timeline! As the author of “Action!”, I’ve mused over the years at the poor quality of interface tools / environments. I’m happy to say that Apple is on to something with “SwiftUI’. They have completely rethought out a declarative UI, kept it quite interactive, and made it much easier to build quality IOS applications.

oracle2025 7y ago

Most of the currently popular frameworks follow the pattern of organizations that make the case that "Designers" and "Programmers" need to be strictly separated.

zozbot234 7y ago
Interfaces should be strictly separated from the internal application code, with generic layers between them. To do it otherwise means ending up with a "big ball of mud" style app, that cannot have its interface redesigned in any way other than by refactoring it completely.