8 ms·
Symbolics Lisp Machine demo (2013) [video]
- dmd 5y agoKalman was a coworker of mine at my previous job, and is just an amazing, stunning hacker.
- abhinav22 5y agoMan that looks so cool. What a beautiful, clean user interface and I assume an amazing experience, with the full power of Lisp. Is there any chance to get a Lisp Machine as an image that we can load in a VM? All I need is a connection the internet and I would be happy to spend all my spare hobby programming time dialed away in my own small corner of a Lisp Machine. No distractions, only Lisp.
- capableweb 5y agoYou can give OpenGenera a try. https://github.com/ynniv/vagrant-opengenera https://github.com/ynniv/vagrant-opengenera has some instructions to get started. http://3e8.org/blog/2016/04/04/symbolics-concordia-in-a-virtual-lisp-machine/ http://3e8.org/blog/2016/04/04/symbolics-concordia-in-a-virt... can take you a bit further. You should give smalltalk a try too, same idea but OOP focus ("defining" maybe rather) https://squeak.org/ https://squeak.org/
- abhinav22 5y agoThanks! Will check it out! Re Smalltalk, I’m 100% a Lisp man, so perhaps later, but not at the moment :-)
- bluefox 5y agoNot exactly a Lisp machine, but check out Medley: https://github.com/Interlisp/medley/ https://github.com/Interlisp/medley/ Lots of fun...
- abhinav22 5y agoThanks! Will check it out.
- natas 5y agoI wish such system was still being commercialized.
- brundolf 5y agoI used to work at Cycorp, a holdover from the AI world of the 80s and to this day a classical (CL-like) Lisp shop. They have an old Symbolics box in their entryway, positioned by a couch as a small coffee table :) I find the whole idea of hardware that's specifically optimized for a totally different programming paradigm than what we're used to just fascinating. It's not hard to imagine why we haven't seen more of it: it's really expensive to iterate on a branch in the computing hardware tree, and you're probably better off just writing a runtime for mainline systems. But still, it's fun to think about. I am a little surprised though that nobody's written an operating system like this for standard hardware. Still a big task, but an order of magnitude less ambitious than custom hardware and with many of the benefits people would've gotten from a Lisp machine.
- mepian 5y agoThere is Mezzano: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
- huachimingo 5y agoSome phones also were made with Java in mind, I think? Not sure if android or old nokias, or both.
- zokier 5y agoThat would be Jazelle, I think handful of Sony-Ericsson phones supported that. Nokia was not a big proponent of Java (they had Symbian to sell), and that was all before Androids time.
- natas 5y agois this legal? (without a genera license?)
- mepian 5y agoThe author of the video works for Symbolics (or rather, for what's left of Symbolics today).
- natas 5y agooh sweet, I wonder who are their customers today.
- capableweb 5y agoWell, their arguments[1] are quite compelling in general, rest of the software[2][3] seems to be highly specialized and specific, I'm guessing there is a lot of maintenance that has to be done still. - [1] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-why-1.htm http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-why-1.htm - [2] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Macsyma-1.htm http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Macsyma-1.htm (general purpose symbolic-numerical-graphical mathematics software product) - [3] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/PDease-1.htm http://www.symbolics-dks.com/PDease-1.htm (general purpose software that uses Finite Element Analysis to obtain numerical solutions to a large class of partial differential equations)
- segmondy 5y agomaybe, maybe not. https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html https://archives.loomcom.com/genera/genera-install.html
- natas 5y agooh that's great.
- smabie 5y agoI believe those instructions do not work anymore. There's a project on github that will build an appropriately old ubuntu vm that runs open genera pretty well provided you have the source. You can also find the source tarball without too much hassle on some torrent sites.
- posobin 5y agoThere are 30(!) comments on HN linking to this video, including discussions of Bret Victor's "Learnable programming", using Lisp in production from last year, comparisons with Smalltalk, a thread with examples of beautiful software, and more: https://ampie.app/url-context?url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://ampie.app/url-context?url=https://www.youtube.com/wa...
- segmondy 5y agoFor those who don't get the lisp machine. imagine how you can inspect your browser, see the html/js, go to console, run commands modify programs etc. Imagine doing that on your OS, that's the experience of Lisp machine.
- Blikkentrekker 5y agoCertainly that is the experience of a specific operating system, not a specific processor architecture. Such an operating system could conceivably run on any machine; it simply ran more efficiently on a Lisp machine.
- agumonkey 5y agoI feel that way everytime I use <browser> devtools.. and that's why I think the web is gonna be the only reincarnation of these lisp machines / smalltalk images
- pjmlp 5y agoThat was my expectation for ChromeOS, but then Google borked the idea.
- capableweb 5y agoAlternatively: your expectations were wrong and Google never aimed for anything like that
- peterohler 5y agoThe good old days. I remember getting one fo the first color machines and writing and dynamic orbital evaluator. What a great development environment.
- sprynr 5y agoThe Symbolics Lisp keyboards are also such amazing inputs devices!(Like the Space Cadet Keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard) They had a button or meta key combination for what seems like thousands of characters or functions. I actually netted an old Symbolics 364000 keyboard from my university and I love the design of it, makes me wish we had kept some of that design language in our modern day languages.
- sedachv 5y agoThey are just not. The Honeywell switches feel like crap IMO. There are no cursor keys. A 104 key Unicomp has better switches and better ergonomics, and just as many function keys - the only thing missing is a 5th (Symbol) modifier key. All you need is the proper key mapping. A 109 key Japanese keyboard is going to have more modifier keys available, and you can get them in your choice of switches. Please don't part out keyboards from old computer systems so you can use them with your Macbook. Give them to people who are actually working on collecting and preserving the old systems.
- nexuist 5y ago> Please don't part out keyboards from old computer systems so you can use them with your Macbook. Give them to people who are actually working on collecting and preserving the old systems. ...Or do with them as you please, so that they may continue pushing the world forward instead of uselessly sitting around in a museum corner collecting dust.
- sprynr 5y ago100% agree, we have full documentation of the board schematics and have photos from full teardowns, along with examples already stored in museums. Storing becomes hoarding after a point.
- sedachv 5y agoI am not talking about hypotheticals or museums, I am talking about actual running systems. I know the most active restorer of Symbolics systems in the US. His biggest problem is finding enough consoles and keyboards. Why don't you try to actually build a reproduction Symbolics keyboard (I did), and see how much time and money it is going to cost you.
- tech_tuna 5y agoI worked with a bunch of OG Symbolics guys back in the mid 2000s. They are the smartest engineers I've ever known. Good people too.
- tech_tuna 5y agoI worked with some of OG Symbolics back in the mid 2000s. The were the smartest engineers I've ever known. Cool people too.
- fmakunbound 5y agoI wish I had tools like that today.