4 ms·

I think the author confused lowest bidder with producing something people could afford. For all their weaknesses micro's could be purchased by normal people. Yo

by msh 3y ago

I think the author confused lowest bidder with producing something people could afford. For all their weaknesses micro's could be purchased by normal people. You could not produce a lisp machine or alto equalent in the 80' that it was possible to afford for regular people.

ta988 3y ago
And Lisp machines were extremely complicated to use. Every time I see one at Vintage computer conventions I am reminded that.
- lispm 3y ago
  Slightly more complex than the UI of something like GNU Emacs, but with a better user interface. Keep in mind that not that many machines ever existed, I would think around 10000 -> thus the UI was less polished, but more capable. It's definitely more difficult, because it does not look&feel like common other user interfaces (say, the Desktop Metaphor used by Apple and others), plus it lacks a few decades improvements.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  They were complicated to use but they were also self-teaching. I learned how to use a Lisp machine by sitting in front of one and trying things. By the end of a week I was fluent. And this was before the Internet; there was no Google. The machine itself contained all the docs and tutorials you needed to learn it. This was a remarkable achievement. Once you learned it you felt like a god because of the abilities the machine gave you. Some degree of learning curve was more than acceptable for that kind of power.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    And once you let the Lisp Machine teach you everything about itself, you had superhuman abilities! One of my favorite Lisp Machine stories (I've fixed dead links to point to archive dot org, and archived the file from stanford's ftp to my https server): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30812434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30812434 Reposting this from the 2014 HN discussion of "Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878679 http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7879364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7879364 eudox on June 11, 2014 Related: A huge collections of images showing Symbolics UI and the software written for it: https://web.archive.org/web/20201216064308/http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201216064308/http://lispm.de/s... ... agumonkey on June 11, 2014 Nice, but I wouldn't confuse static images with the underlying semantic graph of live objects that's not visible in pictures. DonHopkins on June 14, 2014 Precisely! When Lisp Machine programmer look at a screen dump, they see a lot more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. I'll attempt to explain the deep implications of what the article said about "Everything on the screen is an object, mouse-sensitive and reusable": There's a legendary story about Gyro hacking away on a Lisp Machine, when he accidentally trashed the function cell of an important primitive like AREF (or something like that -- I can't remember the details -- do you, Scott? Or does Devon just make this stuff up? ;), and that totally crashed the operating system. It dumped him into a "cold load stream" where he could poke around at the memory image, so he clamored around the display list, a graph of live objects (currently in suspended animation) behind the windows on the screen, and found an instance where the original value of the function pointer had been printed out in hex (which of course was a numeric object that let you click up a menu to change its presentation, etc). He grabbed the value of the function pointer out of that numeric object, poked it back into the function cell where it belonged, pressed the "Please proceed, Governor" button, and was immediately back up and running where he left off before the crash, like nothing had ever happened! Here's another example of someone pulling themselves back up by their bootstraps without actually cold rebooting, thanks to the real time help of the networked Lisp Machine user community: ftp://ftp.ai.sri.com/pub/mailing-lists/slug/900531/msg00339.html => https://donhopkins.com/home/SlugMailingList/msg00339.html https://donhopkins.com/home/SlugMailingList/msg00339.html (I archived the whole directory so you can follow the "Followups" links to read the whole discussion.) Also eudox posted this link: Related: A huge collections of images showing Symbolics UI and the software written for it: http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples....
  - mycall 3y ago
    Maybe something like LISP will be what AI naturally converges to on its own journey towards superhuman intelligence.
  - whartung 3y ago
    I did not have this experience. We had a pair of them, TI Explorers, in our office. I spent several hours over different days "fiddling" with them, and made no progress. The single person that could use them, was not a generalist at all. He simply knew whatever was necessary to dabble wit the expert system bit he was working on. Whatever intuitive relationships were to flower from access, did not manifest with this person. Simply, he wasn't seeking them. He was focused on his little task. If the training docs said "type xxx and hit F5" he would do so without spending an iota of attention about either what he was typing, why he was typing it, or whatever the F5 button did. I made no progress on that machine. Perhaps if I had an hour of knowledgable introduction or guidance as a jumping off point, it would have been different and it would have opened a world to explore. But at the time, for me, it was inscrutable and I went back spending my time on the Suns that we had instead.
    - dreamcompiler 3y ago
      Can't speak to your experience with TI machines because I never used them. I learned on Symbolics and LMI machines.
    - gonzo 3y ago
      TI Explorer LX machines ran Unix with LISP on top. Very different.
  - nl 3y ago
    Unix had (has!) excellent manual page (man ls for those who don't know). I had a similar experience learning SunOS in the early 90s like this.
    - lispm 3y ago
      You can see the Symbolics documentation interface in action: https://vimeo.com/83886950 https://vimeo.com/83886950 It comes with built-in hypertext documentation, which was available online and printed.

by msh 3y ago

ta988 3y ago

And Lisp machines were extremely complicated to use. Every time I see one at Vintage computer conventions I am reminded that.

lispm 3y ago
Slightly more complex than the UI of something like GNU Emacs, but with a better user interface. Keep in mind that not that many machines ever existed, I would think around 10000 -> thus the UI was less polished, but more capable. It's definitely more difficult, because it does not look&feel like common other user interfaces (say, the Desktop Metaphor used by Apple and others), plus it lacks a few decades improvements.
dreamcompiler 3y ago
They were complicated to use but they were also self-teaching. I learned how to use a Lisp machine by sitting in front of one and trying things. By the end of a week I was fluent. And this was before the Internet; there was no Google. The machine itself contained all the docs and tutorials you needed to learn it. This was a remarkable achievement. Once you learned it you felt like a god because of the abilities the machine gave you. Some degree of learning curve was more than acceptable for that kind of power.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  And once you let the Lisp Machine teach you everything about itself, you had superhuman abilities! One of my favorite Lisp Machine stories (I've fixed dead links to point to archive dot org, and archived the file from stanford's ftp to my https server): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30812434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30812434 Reposting this from the 2014 HN discussion of "Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7878679 http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7879364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7879364 eudox on June 11, 2014 Related: A huge collections of images showing Symbolics UI and the software written for it: https://web.archive.org/web/20201216064308/http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201216064308/http://lispm.de/s... ... agumonkey on June 11, 2014 Nice, but I wouldn't confuse static images with the underlying semantic graph of live objects that's not visible in pictures. DonHopkins on June 14, 2014 Precisely! When Lisp Machine programmer look at a screen dump, they see a lot more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. I'll attempt to explain the deep implications of what the article said about "Everything on the screen is an object, mouse-sensitive and reusable": There's a legendary story about Gyro hacking away on a Lisp Machine, when he accidentally trashed the function cell of an important primitive like AREF (or something like that -- I can't remember the details -- do you, Scott? Or does Devon just make this stuff up? ;), and that totally crashed the operating system. It dumped him into a "cold load stream" where he could poke around at the memory image, so he clamored around the display list, a graph of live objects (currently in suspended animation) behind the windows on the screen, and found an instance where the original value of the function pointer had been printed out in hex (which of course was a numeric object that let you click up a menu to change its presentation, etc). He grabbed the value of the function pointer out of that numeric object, poked it back into the function cell where it belonged, pressed the "Please proceed, Governor" button, and was immediately back up and running where he left off before the crash, like nothing had ever happened! Here's another example of someone pulling themselves back up by their bootstraps without actually cold rebooting, thanks to the real time help of the networked Lisp Machine user community: ftp://ftp.ai.sri.com/pub/mailing-lists/slug/900531/msg00339.html => https://donhopkins.com/home/SlugMailingList/msg00339.html https://donhopkins.com/home/SlugMailingList/msg00339.html (I archived the whole directory so you can follow the "Followups" links to read the whole discussion.) Also eudox posted this link: Related: A huge collections of images showing Symbolics UI and the software written for it: http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples.html http://lispm.de/symbolics-ui-examples/symbolics-ui-examples....
- mycall 3y ago
  Maybe something like LISP will be what AI naturally converges to on its own journey towards superhuman intelligence.
- whartung 3y ago
  I did not have this experience. We had a pair of them, TI Explorers, in our office. I spent several hours over different days "fiddling" with them, and made no progress. The single person that could use them, was not a generalist at all. He simply knew whatever was necessary to dabble wit the expert system bit he was working on. Whatever intuitive relationships were to flower from access, did not manifest with this person. Simply, he wasn't seeking them. He was focused on his little task. If the training docs said "type xxx and hit F5" he would do so without spending an iota of attention about either what he was typing, why he was typing it, or whatever the F5 button did. I made no progress on that machine. Perhaps if I had an hour of knowledgable introduction or guidance as a jumping off point, it would have been different and it would have opened a world to explore. But at the time, for me, it was inscrutable and I went back spending my time on the Suns that we had instead.
  - dreamcompiler 3y ago
    Can't speak to your experience with TI machines because I never used them. I learned on Symbolics and LMI machines.
  - gonzo 3y ago
    TI Explorer LX machines ran Unix with LISP on top. Very different.
- nl 3y ago
  Unix had (has!) excellent manual page (man ls for those who don't know). I had a similar experience learning SunOS in the early 90s like this.
  - lispm 3y ago
    You can see the Symbolics documentation interface in action: https://vimeo.com/83886950 https://vimeo.com/83886950 It comes with built-in hypertext documentation, which was available online and printed.