4 ms·

Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

119 points by pamoroso 3mo ago

ux266478 3mo ago
If you find PARC interesting, and especially if you're interested in symbolic computation, I can highly recommend digging as deep as you can possibly stomach into the FGCS: https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html As a public research initiative, pretty much everything was published when the initiative was completed. PIMs are absolute engineering marvels. The ICOT had command of an army of the absolute best talent in the entire country, and unified them towards a goal of pure exploratory research with no market pressure, with all the excesses of 1980s Japan.
- watersb 3mo ago
  FGCS: the Fifth-Generation Computing System I was really excited about this initiative at the time, just starting my computer science undergrad degree. Hardware that ran Prolog as close to bare metal as possible. Thanks for the reminder. 40 years ago.
- imglorp 3mo ago
  More Japanese excesses from the '80s: the Tron computing project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project
  - AreShoesFeet000 3mo ago
    > According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, in 1989 US officials feared that TRON could undercut American dominance in computers, but that in the end PC software and chips based on the TRON technology proved no match for Windows and Intel's processors as a global standard. “Excess” implies irrationality, but I wonder how could something irrational be a threat to ‘American dominance in computers’?
emmelaich 3mo ago
Getting "too many requests" at the moment.
alexpotato 3mo ago
Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561513200928 https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561...
- matheusmoreira 3mo ago
  > use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?
  - randallsquared 3mo ago
    Unless mandated, why would the people controlling a corporation (and its budget) do that? While the corp has money in the bank, it's kinda their money, in the sense that they decide what to spend it on. If distributed back to the shareholders, the money evaporates from their perspective, so there's not much incentive to do it unless it's required, or unless they will benefit by it (e.g., they have a lot of stock themselves and would like the dividend).
    - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
      Corporations that have gone public are essentially lost causes. CEOs are incentivized to maximize shareholder profits at all costs, and it's much easier and cheaper to enshittify than to research and develop. I suppose it's possible for privately owned corporations to be awesome. If the guy in charge cares, awesome things will happen. Valve is the only concrete example that comes to mind.
  - pjc50 3mo ago
    Shareholders will happily vote to hand all the money over to the CEO if he's charismatic enough: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-musk-ended-up-with-132-billion-pay-package https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-m...
animanoir 3mo ago
[dead]
Ozzie-D 3mo ago
[flagged]
eggy 3mo ago
A great tech book on symbolic computers in general and Lisp machines, is Peter Kogge's 1991, "The Architecture of Symbolic Computers". I believe new efforts by people like Yann LeCun will counter the "LLMs or bust" monoculture along with SOC/ASICs, in-memory compute, neuromorphic chips, dataflow, optical/analog hybrids , etc. that will bring a healthy correction or alternatives to the Von Neumann architecture.
mark_l_watson 3mo ago
I had a Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine, ran InterLisp-D on it for about two years, then slowed it down by installing Common Lisp on it. Wonderful for Larry et.,al. to keep it going as open source.
anonzzzies 3mo ago
You can have the residential programming feel with SBCL; it's a pleasure.
virajk_31 3mo ago
"Residential programming" isn't it similar to interepreter!! Difference I can think of is it can completely rewrite something instead of updating or extending it. ex. rewrite the existing function instead of re-defining it.
- pamoroso 3mo ago
  The Interlisp manual defines residential programming like this: «The "residential" style, where you stay inside the environment throughout the development, is essential for these tools to operate.» https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17 https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17
  - RetroTechie 3mo ago
    Does this need anything beyond interactive REPL? If so: what?
    - kode-targz 3mo ago
      An image-based execution model. In Common Lisp, the compiled code and data are both saved as a memory snapshot, kind of like an OS image (think an ISO you can boot into). This means you can hot-swap the code part, while keeping the data and run-time configuration, on a running system. A REPL is part of it, but it's not the whole picture.
TheTaytay 3mo ago
I wasn’t familiar with the term “Residential programming,” but it reminds me of the talk “Stop Writing Dead Programs” (https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/ https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/) Increasingly, I think that an agent (and I) would work much better in a malleable, notebook-like, inspectable program, than it would with its current file-based “edit and re-run” primitives. “Marimo pair” (built into their notebook-like primitive) is an attempt at this. And they have program introspection tools built in. I also think that Glamorous Toolkit (https://gtoolkit.com/ https://gtoolkit.com/) might be a similar live environment, but I haven’t investigated it too much other than reading about it. Is anyone else familiar with “modern” attempts at this?
- pturing 3mo ago
  > Is anyone else familiar with “modern” attempts at this? Glamorous Toolkit is the main one I have found, yah. The TruffleSqueak demos are pretty cool: https://github.com/hpi-swa/trufflesqueak https://github.com/hpi-swa/trufflesqueak Enso Analytics also runs on GraalVM: https://ensoanalytics.com/ https://ensoanalytics.com/ Love the "Stop Writing Dead Programs" talk - and of course "Inventing on Principle" by Bret Victor is required viewing for anyone that hasn't seen it yet. https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII
akater 3mo ago
> Is there an Interlisp echo in today’s development culture? Emacs not mentioned. It better have been.
deterministic 3mo ago
It turned out in practice that a Lisp Machine was basically a Lisp interpreter implemented in hardware. A better and much more pragmatic solution was to compile Lisp to efficient machine code and then run it on any traditional CPU. Which is what we do today.

119 points by pamoroso 3mo ago

If you find PARC interesting, and especially if you're interested in symbolic computation, I can highly recommend digging as deep as you can possibly stomach into the FGCS: https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html As a public research initiative, pretty much everything was published when the initiative was completed. PIMs are absolute engineering marvels. The ICOT had command of an army of the absolute best talent in the entire country, and unified them towards a goal of pure exploratory research with no market pressure, with all the excesses of 1980s Japan.

watersb 3mo ago
FGCS: the Fifth-Generation Computing System I was really excited about this initiative at the time, just starting my computer science undergrad degree. Hardware that ran Prolog as close to bare metal as possible. Thanks for the reminder. 40 years ago.
imglorp 3mo ago
More Japanese excesses from the '80s: the Tron computing project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project
- AreShoesFeet000 3mo ago
  > According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, in 1989 US officials feared that TRON could undercut American dominance in computers, but that in the end PC software and chips based on the TRON technology proved no match for Windows and Intel's processors as a global standard. “Excess” implies irrationality, but I wonder how could something irrational be a threat to ‘American dominance in computers’?

emmelaich 3mo ago

Getting "too many requests" at the moment.

alexpotato 3mo ago

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561513200928 https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561...

matheusmoreira 3mo ago
> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?
- randallsquared 3mo ago
  Unless mandated, why would the people controlling a corporation (and its budget) do that? While the corp has money in the bank, it's kinda their money, in the sense that they decide what to spend it on. If distributed back to the shareholders, the money evaporates from their perspective, so there's not much incentive to do it unless it's required, or unless they will benefit by it (e.g., they have a lot of stock themselves and would like the dividend).
  - matheusmoreira 3mo ago
    Corporations that have gone public are essentially lost causes. CEOs are incentivized to maximize shareholder profits at all costs, and it's much easier and cheaper to enshittify than to research and develop. I suppose it's possible for privately owned corporations to be awesome. If the guy in charge cares, awesome things will happen. Valve is the only concrete example that comes to mind.
- pjc50 3mo ago
  Shareholders will happily vote to hand all the money over to the CEO if he's charismatic enough: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-musk-ended-up-with-132-billion-pay-package https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-m...

animanoir 3mo ago

[dead]

Ozzie-D 3mo ago

[flagged]

eggy 3mo ago

A great tech book on symbolic computers in general and Lisp machines, is Peter Kogge's 1991, "The Architecture of Symbolic Computers". I believe new efforts by people like Yann LeCun will counter the "LLMs or bust" monoculture along with SOC/ASICs, in-memory compute, neuromorphic chips, dataflow, optical/analog hybrids , etc. that will bring a healthy correction or alternatives to the Von Neumann architecture.

mark_l_watson 3mo ago

I had a Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine, ran InterLisp-D on it for about two years, then slowed it down by installing Common Lisp on it. Wonderful for Larry et.,al. to keep it going as open source.

anonzzzies 3mo ago

You can have the residential programming feel with SBCL; it's a pleasure.

virajk_31 3mo ago

"Residential programming" isn't it similar to interepreter!! Difference I can think of is it can completely rewrite something instead of updating or extending it. ex. rewrite the existing function instead of re-defining it.

pamoroso 3mo ago
The Interlisp manual defines residential programming like this: «The "residential" style, where you stay inside the environment throughout the development, is essential for these tools to operate.» https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17 https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17
- RetroTechie 3mo ago
  Does this need anything beyond interactive REPL? If so: what?
  - kode-targz 3mo ago
    An image-based execution model. In Common Lisp, the compiled code and data are both saved as a memory snapshot, kind of like an OS image (think an ISO you can boot into). This means you can hot-swap the code part, while keeping the data and run-time configuration, on a running system. A REPL is part of it, but it's not the whole picture.

TheTaytay 3mo ago

I wasn’t familiar with the term “Residential programming,” but it reminds me of the talk “Stop Writing Dead Programs” (https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/ https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/) Increasingly, I think that an agent (and I) would work much better in a malleable, notebook-like, inspectable program, than it would with its current file-based “edit and re-run” primitives. “Marimo pair” (built into their notebook-like primitive) is an attempt at this. And they have program introspection tools built in. I also think that Glamorous Toolkit (https://gtoolkit.com/ https://gtoolkit.com/) might be a similar live environment, but I haven’t investigated it too much other than reading about it. Is anyone else familiar with “modern” attempts at this?

pturing 3mo ago
> Is anyone else familiar with “modern” attempts at this? Glamorous Toolkit is the main one I have found, yah. The TruffleSqueak demos are pretty cool: https://github.com/hpi-swa/trufflesqueak https://github.com/hpi-swa/trufflesqueak Enso Analytics also runs on GraalVM: https://ensoanalytics.com/ https://ensoanalytics.com/ Love the "Stop Writing Dead Programs" talk - and of course "Inventing on Principle" by Bret Victor is required viewing for anyone that hasn't seen it yet. https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII

akater 3mo ago

> Is there an Interlisp echo in today’s development culture? Emacs not mentioned. It better have been.

deterministic 3mo ago

It turned out in practice that a Lisp Machine was basically a Lisp interpreter implemented in hardware. A better and much more pragmatic solution was to compile Lisp to efficient machine code and then run it on any traditional CPU. Which is what we do today.