> Symbolics...was simply an example of a Lisp system done well Gratuitous reference: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=80662 http://news.ycombinator.com/ite

> Symbolics...was simply an example of a Lisp system done well Gratuitous reference: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=80662 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=80662 (checkout pg's first comment on that post ) Symbolics was the future. CS has in many ways regressed since then, mostly because of the stupendous success of worse-is-better unix/c mindset coupled with lack of DARPA funding ,the AI winter & the rise of cheap wintel cpu's. At Goldman Sachs, I was incredibly fortunate to work alongside one of the original Symbolics guys ( listed here: http://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/legacy.html http://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/legacy.html ). He complained long and hard about how the c/c++/java family of PLs were "absolute shit" and OOP was doomed from the get go and why functional will be back someday. This was back in the 1999-2000 timeframe when Sun was in the driver's seat and everywhere you looked, it was OOP or bust. Now, ten years hence, functional is all the rage, and you've got clojure, functional java, scala, several functional JS libs...all that's old is new once again! Who knows, with all this VC $$$ searching for a home, we might actually see the resurgence of a LISP Machine. Symbolics 2.0 FTW!!!