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http://informatimago.free.fr/i/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html http://informatimago.free.fr/i/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linu... Wouldn’t be a bad idea at al

http://informatimago.free.fr/i/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html http://informatimago.free.fr/i/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linu... Wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to have the equivalent of modern Lisp Machine.

sph 4y ago
I've been designing one in my head for the past month, it's become an obsession. I don't know if I'm onto something, or caught a really bad case of the Lisp fever. What's the recommended treating regimen?
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  A bit afraid of throwing gasoline on fire, but... > What's the recommended treating regimen? Implement! The only way out is through.
  - sph 4y ago
    Yeah, that's my plan for the weekend. I'm currently working on a minimal Lisp implementation written in Rust, step 2 is to compile the thing into a free-standing UEFI binary, and give it the ability to execute machine code. The final goal is something akin to DOS, but the prompt is a Lisp that has access to the entire machine at full privileges and complete control over the hardware. I'm also exploring how to make it possible to rewrite the most core functions from the Lisp environment, so I could, for example, replace a naive "eval" function with native code after boot. What can you build with the most minimal "operating system" paired the most meta-programmable environment? My dream is to add a simple display, keyboard and have this run on a RISC-V SoC, that simply boots with the prompt: "> " (I hate you for making me write this down and adding more fuel to the fire.)
    - rjsw 4y ago
      Why not use an existing Lisp implementation that has a good compiler? Or just run Mezzano [1]. [1] https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
      - sph 4y ago
        Because I want to follow my vision. There is space for more than one thing in the world. Also, Common Lisp is nice but it's anything but minimal. One of the questions I want to answer is what is the minimum amount of constructs you need to have complete control over your hardware, while able to rewrite the entire kernel at run time. I bet it's not that many. That said, Mezzano is cool and I should play with it more.
        qubex 4y ago
        “Minimum number of constructs you need to have complete control over your hardware” is a bit of a slippery slope when it’s known that one-instruction computers are Turing Complete (“subtract and branch if negative” being one I recall). There’s plenty of mind-bending stuff on esolangs.org
        sph 4y ago
        Fair enough, but Lisp needs a little more than subleq & co. to do something useful :)
        qubex 4y ago
        Turing-Church Thesis disagrees.
        mschaef 4y ago
        You're right of course, but picking the specific point on the slippery slope you mentioned earlier is why this is an interesting engineering problem (and not a math/logic problem).
        gjadi 4y ago
        If you're looking for a minimalist lisp, checkout Shen: https://www.shenlanguage.org/ https://www.shenlanguage.org/
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    Contact the people who designed and used Lisp machines and get their very, very expert take. Many are still alive.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      And please document your findings! Would love to read.
      - shaftoe 4y ago
        Seriously. A well documented history of the lisp machines would be at the top of my Christmas list.
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  You might want to look at Mezzano which is an operation system written in Common Lisp https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano I haven’t tried it since moving to M1/ARM, but it is cool.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Resist! Resist! Your brain is subject to colonization by self-referential idea complexes, but it is has defenses. We have learned a great deal over decades about how to make languages that enable building reliable, expressive systems. Lisps can draw upon very little of that learning. Types can do heavy lifting, where put to work. Instead of rebuilding something that was tried in the '70s, learn what they didn't know then, and apply it to something wholly new.
  - sph 4y ago
    Meh. The fact that software engineers as they get older they are return to older and older technologies has to have a reason... or can simply be explained by declining mental faculties :) Types are cool, but are way overrated. Correctness isn't the only useful metric to optimise for. They are important if I am running a business and I don't want my crashing software to lose customers, but they are a hindrance if I just want to have fun and break things. Fun and productive businesses have been built on Lisp, BASIC and Python. Languages aren't continuously getting better. They are on a cycle that repeats every 25 years. We've just entered another strong typing era.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      If you imagine the only or main use for a powerful type system is error-checking, it only demonstrates how much you have still to learn. It is not language design that is on a cycle, but people circling back to what excited them in their youth. But that was not the Lisp, it was youth itself, which you will not find in Lisp. Types, as I wrote above, can perform heavy lifting in a language that empowers them. New vistas await!
      - mschaef 4y ago
        > If you imagine the only or main use for a powerful type system is error-checking, it only demonstrates how much you have still to learn. It is not language design that is on a cycle, but people circling back to what excited them in their youth. But that was not the Lisp, it was youth itself, which you will not find in Lisp. Ironically, this comment reminds me of nothing more than the Smug Lisp Weenies of yore. https://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie https://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie I realize that we're all about technical purity over marketing, but I don't think you'll convince people to join your cause by 1) insulting their knowledge and 2) dismissing their interest in an alternative point of view as a way to 'reclaim their youth'. You may be right on both counts - I don't know - but even for someone interested in the technology alone, it's hardly a convincing argument to want to look into more strongly typed languages. (or whatever other technical feature you might want to advocate) Lisp received decades worth of attention and investment from folks at the frontier of the field, and it's stayed relegated to the margin for almost the entirety of that time. For people that took the time to learn Lisp, it could be a compelling and powerful environment. But the problem has been that to understand the advantages, you have to spend real time and effort to get there. You have to do the reading, do the work, write and evolve software, and accept a different way of working. The strongly typed functional programming community of today has some of the same sorts of issues and Lisp did back in the day. It's a compelling technology with lots of benefits, but it takes real work to understand and take advantage of. For people that have done the work and already get it, it's an obviously compelling thing - the way things 'should be'. For people that don't, it's an academic ivory tower or worse. Whatever you believe about your favored technology, it's the way this gap is addressed that will make the difference in whether or not it's successful or not. Lisp never did get it right. (Although Clojure arguably got pretty close.) I don't mean to specifically offend your sensibilities with respect to your comment, but I can't help but think you're just repeating the same mistake the Lisp folks did. (And no, there isn't a technical distinction between Lisp and whatever that will fix what is fundamentally a marketing and persuasion issue.)
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  I had a friend (Passed away, RIP) who went to MIT and learned how to program on those things. She was really confused when Microsoft went full-in on OOP in the 90s because it flew in the face of everything she learned while there about how to write programs that don't crash. May as well go all in on that idea and make a name for yourself.

sph 4y ago

I've been designing one in my head for the past month, it's become an obsession. I don't know if I'm onto something, or caught a really bad case of the Lisp fever. What's the recommended treating regimen?

MonkeyClub 4y ago
A bit afraid of throwing gasoline on fire, but... > What's the recommended treating regimen? Implement! The only way out is through.
- sph 4y ago
  Yeah, that's my plan for the weekend. I'm currently working on a minimal Lisp implementation written in Rust, step 2 is to compile the thing into a free-standing UEFI binary, and give it the ability to execute machine code. The final goal is something akin to DOS, but the prompt is a Lisp that has access to the entire machine at full privileges and complete control over the hardware. I'm also exploring how to make it possible to rewrite the most core functions from the Lisp environment, so I could, for example, replace a naive "eval" function with native code after boot. What can you build with the most minimal "operating system" paired the most meta-programmable environment? My dream is to add a simple display, keyboard and have this run on a RISC-V SoC, that simply boots with the prompt: "> " (I hate you for making me write this down and adding more fuel to the fire.)
  - rjsw 4y ago
    Why not use an existing Lisp implementation that has a good compiler? Or just run Mezzano [1]. [1] https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
    - sph 4y ago
      Because I want to follow my vision. There is space for more than one thing in the world. Also, Common Lisp is nice but it's anything but minimal. One of the questions I want to answer is what is the minimum amount of constructs you need to have complete control over your hardware, while able to rewrite the entire kernel at run time. I bet it's not that many. That said, Mezzano is cool and I should play with it more.
      - qubex 4y ago
        “Minimum number of constructs you need to have complete control over your hardware” is a bit of a slippery slope when it’s known that one-instruction computers are Turing Complete (“subtract and branch if negative” being one I recall). There’s plenty of mind-bending stuff on esolangs.org
        sph 4y ago
        Fair enough, but Lisp needs a little more than subleq & co. to do something useful :)
        qubex 4y ago
        Turing-Church Thesis disagrees.
        mschaef 4y ago
        You're right of course, but picking the specific point on the slippery slope you mentioned earlier is why this is an interesting engineering problem (and not a math/logic problem).
      - gjadi 4y ago
        If you're looking for a minimalist lisp, checkout Shen: https://www.shenlanguage.org/ https://www.shenlanguage.org/
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  Contact the people who designed and used Lisp machines and get their very, very expert take. Many are still alive.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    And please document your findings! Would love to read.
    - shaftoe 4y ago
      Seriously. A well documented history of the lisp machines would be at the top of my Christmas list.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
You might want to look at Mezzano which is an operation system written in Common Lisp https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano I haven’t tried it since moving to M1/ARM, but it is cool.
moloch-hai 4y ago
Resist! Resist! Your brain is subject to colonization by self-referential idea complexes, but it is has defenses. We have learned a great deal over decades about how to make languages that enable building reliable, expressive systems. Lisps can draw upon very little of that learning. Types can do heavy lifting, where put to work. Instead of rebuilding something that was tried in the '70s, learn what they didn't know then, and apply it to something wholly new.
- sph 4y ago
  Meh. The fact that software engineers as they get older they are return to older and older technologies has to have a reason... or can simply be explained by declining mental faculties :) Types are cool, but are way overrated. Correctness isn't the only useful metric to optimise for. They are important if I am running a business and I don't want my crashing software to lose customers, but they are a hindrance if I just want to have fun and break things. Fun and productive businesses have been built on Lisp, BASIC and Python. Languages aren't continuously getting better. They are on a cycle that repeats every 25 years. We've just entered another strong typing era.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    If you imagine the only or main use for a powerful type system is error-checking, it only demonstrates how much you have still to learn. It is not language design that is on a cycle, but people circling back to what excited them in their youth. But that was not the Lisp, it was youth itself, which you will not find in Lisp. Types, as I wrote above, can perform heavy lifting in a language that empowers them. New vistas await!
    - mschaef 4y ago
      > If you imagine the only or main use for a powerful type system is error-checking, it only demonstrates how much you have still to learn. It is not language design that is on a cycle, but people circling back to what excited them in their youth. But that was not the Lisp, it was youth itself, which you will not find in Lisp. Ironically, this comment reminds me of nothing more than the Smug Lisp Weenies of yore. https://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie https://wiki.c2.com/?SmugLispWeenie I realize that we're all about technical purity over marketing, but I don't think you'll convince people to join your cause by 1) insulting their knowledge and 2) dismissing their interest in an alternative point of view as a way to 'reclaim their youth'. You may be right on both counts - I don't know - but even for someone interested in the technology alone, it's hardly a convincing argument to want to look into more strongly typed languages. (or whatever other technical feature you might want to advocate) Lisp received decades worth of attention and investment from folks at the frontier of the field, and it's stayed relegated to the margin for almost the entirety of that time. For people that took the time to learn Lisp, it could be a compelling and powerful environment. But the problem has been that to understand the advantages, you have to spend real time and effort to get there. You have to do the reading, do the work, write and evolve software, and accept a different way of working. The strongly typed functional programming community of today has some of the same sorts of issues and Lisp did back in the day. It's a compelling technology with lots of benefits, but it takes real work to understand and take advantage of. For people that have done the work and already get it, it's an obviously compelling thing - the way things 'should be'. For people that don't, it's an academic ivory tower or worse. Whatever you believe about your favored technology, it's the way this gap is addressed that will make the difference in whether or not it's successful or not. Lisp never did get it right. (Although Clojure arguably got pretty close.) I don't mean to specifically offend your sensibilities with respect to your comment, but I can't help but think you're just repeating the same mistake the Lisp folks did. (And no, there isn't a technical distinction between Lisp and whatever that will fix what is fundamentally a marketing and persuasion issue.)
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I had a friend (Passed away, RIP) who went to MIT and learned how to program on those things. She was really confused when Microsoft went full-in on OOP in the 90s because it flew in the face of everything she learned while there about how to write programs that don't crash. May as well go all in on that idea and make a name for yourself.