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I believe that the user experience from this system, and similar, can be equally attained with other languages. Of course, Lisp all the things, and I will agre

I believe that the user experience from this system, and similar, can be equally attained with other languages. Of course, Lisp all the things, and I will agree there is no need of any other language, if that is to be argued .. but! We could surely build an execution environment (which is what this is) with some other of the newer languages, broken as they may or may not be.

p_l 7y ago
Genera supported in fact multiple languages, though I believe Lisp was used as intermediary representation. There was even support for C, good enough that there's a demo video of libpbg being compiled and used.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  That's fascinating, got a link to the demo video somewhere? I can't seem to muster the fu ..
  - p_l 7y ago
    It's JPEG, not PNG, but here you go, a demo by Kalman Reti (one of the Symbolics' developers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk It shows a debug session where C code running on the lisp machine (VLM in this case, unknown variant of the VLM though) is debugged to fix JPEG decompression error.
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      Thanks, that's really intriguing. Ah, to think of all the things that could have been ..
reikonomusha 7y ago
I don’t agree. The programming language needs to have a dynamic and incremental runtime. Genera wasn’t some large static OS; everything was written in Lisp and could be defined, redefined, or augmented at runtime. The design of the OS depends on this.
- p_l 7y ago
  There needs to be common base runtime capable of complex types, objects, runtime redefinition support, exception handling etc. Languages can vary on top of that.
  - reikonomusha 7y ago
    I agree and that’s what the Lisp machines did brilliantly. In it’s current incarnation, and Turing yadda yadda aside, you wouldn’t be able to do what you can on the Lisp machine if you’re starting with C.
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      You could do it with a language like Lua on top of C, though.
    - somesortofsystm 7y ago
      Unreal Engine.
      - armitron 7y ago
        Exposes an API and lets you use it dynamically but (huge but) doesn't let you modify the entirety of Unreal Engine itself dynamically at runtime.
        somesortofsystm 7y ago
        Its not far from being able to do that, though. UE already has very well integrated, introspective build tooling - whats missing is an editor, basically, that could handle the code-base of UE, and then .. wouldn't take much effort to integrate and complete the dynamic runtime/compiler-onboard loop.
kjs3 7y ago
Maybe you could, and you can believe whatever you want, but in 30 years, no one has.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Sure they did, JVM and CLR are kind of approximations of this. Then the development experience still exists when using commercial Common Lisps, and Smalltalk provides also such full stack and interactive experience.
  - somesortofsystm 7y ago
    Yeah, I think its really just a bit of NIMBY in terms of opposing views. "Nobody has done that yet" isn't really true - just nobody has commercialized a new-generation implementation of the Symbolics ideology in a way that is easily recognized. I mean, Unreal Engine Editor is pretty close to having a lot of the mechanics right, in terms of a parallel/similar implementation. Perhaps its just not in the nay-sayers view, or there's a disagreement about what the interface/execution environment 'really' is. Anyway, with its management of C++ builds, UE could probably be pushed to compete with this rig.
  - kjs3 7y ago
    JVM & CLR are an interesting counterpoint. I'm not sure I agree, but that's interesting to think about. I disagree a bit with commercial Common Lisps. It's been a while since I used one (Allegro, Lucid), but I never felt they were full-stack integrated in the way that Genera was. Maybe though that's just nostalgia 25 years down the line and I'm remember that it "wasn't Genera". They were a fine environment to work in. Smalltalk...I think you got me there. There were/are some very nicely integrated Smalltalk environments. Good point.
- oalae5niMiel7qu 7y ago
  ....except Terry Davis.
msla 7y ago
The web browser has been trending this way ever since JS was added to it. It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, it simply isn't done as well, and it isn't done entirely consistently across web browser implementations. The shortcomings and flaws don't negate the fact it is the same kind of thing. The Original Java Utopia, the world dreamed up by Sun where Java Applets would abolish the Windows desktop and the JVM would obsolete platform dependence, was a shadow of this idea with a fundamentally more static language, and one more like Smalltalk than Lisp. But with Java we've already lost the thread of an active environment, one which is responsive to on-the-fly reprogrammability and deep inspection. Maybe it could be done in terms of the JVM, but Java never seems to be used that way.
- somesortofsystm 7y ago
  There were Java environments in the very early days which attempted to make the dream of Smalltalk-like execution/programming environments feasible .. there was one called "Visix Vibe" which used Java to make fantastic GUI's for easy deployment, and had the ability to ship source with all products, meaning the components could be edited in-environment. Dunno what happened to Visix, but there were a few other similar style IDE's in the works in the 90's ..
- scroot 7y ago
  > It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, it simply isn't done as well, and it isn't done entirely consistently across web browser implementations One of the worst parts is that you don't do web development in the web browser itself.
- flavio81 7y ago
  >The web browser has been trending this way ever since JS was added to it. It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, It lacks lots of features to get there: - you can't dwell into the browser internals (or modify them), and the internals aren't written in Js. - you can't save the running state of the system to disk - as a language, JavaScript even in its current spec is still behind Common Lisp in power and features... For example, even decades later, lisp s-expressions are still superior to JSON! etc etc
flavio81 7y ago
>I believe that the user experience from this system, and similar, can be equally attained with other languages. Only with Smalltalk. And then, Common Lisp has a more powerful OOP system and usually runs faster.

p_l 7y ago

Genera supported in fact multiple languages, though I believe Lisp was used as intermediary representation. There was even support for C, good enough that there's a demo video of libpbg being compiled and used.

fit2rule 7y ago
That's fascinating, got a link to the demo video somewhere? I can't seem to muster the fu ..
- p_l 7y ago
  It's JPEG, not PNG, but here you go, a demo by Kalman Reti (one of the Symbolics' developers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk It shows a debug session where C code running on the lisp machine (VLM in this case, unknown variant of the VLM though) is debugged to fix JPEG decompression error.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    Thanks, that's really intriguing. Ah, to think of all the things that could have been ..

reikonomusha 7y ago

I don’t agree. The programming language needs to have a dynamic and incremental runtime. Genera wasn’t some large static OS; everything was written in Lisp and could be defined, redefined, or augmented at runtime. The design of the OS depends on this.

p_l 7y ago
There needs to be common base runtime capable of complex types, objects, runtime redefinition support, exception handling etc. Languages can vary on top of that.
- reikonomusha 7y ago
  I agree and that’s what the Lisp machines did brilliantly. In it’s current incarnation, and Turing yadda yadda aside, you wouldn’t be able to do what you can on the Lisp machine if you’re starting with C.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    You could do it with a language like Lua on top of C, though.
  - somesortofsystm 7y ago
    Unreal Engine.
    - armitron 7y ago
      Exposes an API and lets you use it dynamically but (huge but) doesn't let you modify the entirety of Unreal Engine itself dynamically at runtime.
      - somesortofsystm 7y ago
        Its not far from being able to do that, though. UE already has very well integrated, introspective build tooling - whats missing is an editor, basically, that could handle the code-base of UE, and then .. wouldn't take much effort to integrate and complete the dynamic runtime/compiler-onboard loop.

kjs3 7y ago

Maybe you could, and you can believe whatever you want, but in 30 years, no one has.

pjmlp 7y ago
Sure they did, JVM and CLR are kind of approximations of this. Then the development experience still exists when using commercial Common Lisps, and Smalltalk provides also such full stack and interactive experience.
- somesortofsystm 7y ago
  Yeah, I think its really just a bit of NIMBY in terms of opposing views. "Nobody has done that yet" isn't really true - just nobody has commercialized a new-generation implementation of the Symbolics ideology in a way that is easily recognized. I mean, Unreal Engine Editor is pretty close to having a lot of the mechanics right, in terms of a parallel/similar implementation. Perhaps its just not in the nay-sayers view, or there's a disagreement about what the interface/execution environment 'really' is. Anyway, with its management of C++ builds, UE could probably be pushed to compete with this rig.
- kjs3 7y ago
  JVM & CLR are an interesting counterpoint. I'm not sure I agree, but that's interesting to think about. I disagree a bit with commercial Common Lisps. It's been a while since I used one (Allegro, Lucid), but I never felt they were full-stack integrated in the way that Genera was. Maybe though that's just nostalgia 25 years down the line and I'm remember that it "wasn't Genera". They were a fine environment to work in. Smalltalk...I think you got me there. There were/are some very nicely integrated Smalltalk environments. Good point.
oalae5niMiel7qu 7y ago
....except Terry Davis.

msla 7y ago

The web browser has been trending this way ever since JS was added to it. It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, it simply isn't done as well, and it isn't done entirely consistently across web browser implementations. The shortcomings and flaws don't negate the fact it is the same kind of thing. The Original Java Utopia, the world dreamed up by Sun where Java Applets would abolish the Windows desktop and the JVM would obsolete platform dependence, was a shadow of this idea with a fundamentally more static language, and one more like Smalltalk than Lisp. But with Java we've already lost the thread of an active environment, one which is responsive to on-the-fly reprogrammability and deep inspection. Maybe it could be done in terms of the JVM, but Java never seems to be used that way.

somesortofsystm 7y ago
There were Java environments in the very early days which attempted to make the dream of Smalltalk-like execution/programming environments feasible .. there was one called "Visix Vibe" which used Java to make fantastic GUI's for easy deployment, and had the ability to ship source with all products, meaning the components could be edited in-environment. Dunno what happened to Visix, but there were a few other similar style IDE's in the works in the 90's ..
scroot 7y ago
> It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, it simply isn't done as well, and it isn't done entirely consistently across web browser implementations One of the worst parts is that you don't do web development in the web browser itself.
flavio81 7y ago
>The web browser has been trending this way ever since JS was added to it. It's an active environment controlled by a dynamic language, It lacks lots of features to get there: - you can't dwell into the browser internals (or modify them), and the internals aren't written in Js. - you can't save the running state of the system to disk - as a language, JavaScript even in its current spec is still behind Common Lisp in power and features... For example, even decades later, lisp s-expressions are still superior to JSON! etc etc

flavio81 7y ago

>I believe that the user experience from this system, and similar, can be equally attained with other languages. Only with Smalltalk. And then, Common Lisp has a more powerful OOP system and usually runs faster.