6 ms·

The writing in this post is superb. One of my favorite lines: "Windows is the Superbowl Halftime Show of operating systems. Given what everyone got paid, and h

The writing in this post is superb. One of my favorite lines: "Windows is the Superbowl Halftime Show of operating systems. Given what everyone got paid, and how many people were involved, you’d think it would be a lot more memorable." As someone who spends a lot of time with Windows...yeah. But the post is really an amazing blend of technology and sentiment, kind of reminiscent of Neal Stephenson at his best. Makes me want to dust off my PDP-11 emulator and take another crack at Unix V6.

hollerith 12y ago
My favorite paragraph, about LISP machines: >It is a very weird experience. It feels like a machine for monks or nuns. Baffling. But there is this weird sense of raw power . . .
- fsck--off 12y ago
  The author deliberately used the term "LISP Machine", with all of the letters of Lisp capitalized, but that's an anachronism (and a fairly good shibboleth). When they were developed they ran Lisp Machine Lisp, not LISP. And as far as I know they never used the specific appellation "LISP Machines", where the word Lisp was written in all capitals but the word machines was not. Edit: It's hard to distinguish someone's tone on the internet, but I did not intend to be captious or mean spirited. My point is that there are enough differences between LISP and Lisp Machine Lisp, a descendent of Maclisp, that the two are not interchangeable.
  - lispm 12y ago
    I have a printed Lisp Machine Manual from 1981. It's always Lisp, never LISP. Also: Zetalisp. Only the frontpage says: LISP CHINE NUAL
- cbd1984 12y ago
  If LispMs are for monks or nuns, is ITS for sorcerers? I especially liked how you could patch a running kernel, but only if you entered a specific keystroke sequence the right way the first time. If you muffed it, a flag got set and the system would disallow future attempts even if you got it right later. It's more like a puzzle in a text adventure than an OS security mechanism. And, of course, the command shell was a machine code debugger, but that really wasn't hugely weird in itself.
endgame 12y ago
What a lovely, strange and reflective piece.
lotharbot 12y ago
It's both beautiful writing, and beautiful screenshots. Something in me jumped for joy as I was scrolling, and I didn't even have most of those systems (went from a TRS-80 Model 1 to a Sanyo MBC-550 to a 386 running MS-DOS 6.22, and then on to a bunch of variants of Windows.)
stevewilhelm 12y ago
Hella enterprise software was written and shipped on i386-based PCs running Windows NT.
cowabunga 12y ago
Oh it's certainly memorable after spending three hours arguing with COM interop today! :(
ribs 12y ago
I'm thinking more of William Gibson - BTW his new novel is available - but - yeah.

hollerith 12y ago

My favorite paragraph, about LISP machines: >It is a very weird experience. It feels like a machine for monks or nuns. Baffling. But there is this weird sense of raw power . . .

fsck--off 12y ago
The author deliberately used the term "LISP Machine", with all of the letters of Lisp capitalized, but that's an anachronism (and a fairly good shibboleth). When they were developed they ran Lisp Machine Lisp, not LISP. And as far as I know they never used the specific appellation "LISP Machines", where the word Lisp was written in all capitals but the word machines was not. Edit: It's hard to distinguish someone's tone on the internet, but I did not intend to be captious or mean spirited. My point is that there are enough differences between LISP and Lisp Machine Lisp, a descendent of Maclisp, that the two are not interchangeable.
- lispm 12y ago
  I have a printed Lisp Machine Manual from 1981. It's always Lisp, never LISP. Also: Zetalisp. Only the frontpage says: LISP CHINE NUAL
cbd1984 12y ago
If LispMs are for monks or nuns, is ITS for sorcerers? I especially liked how you could patch a running kernel, but only if you entered a specific keystroke sequence the right way the first time. If you muffed it, a flag got set and the system would disallow future attempts even if you got it right later. It's more like a puzzle in a text adventure than an OS security mechanism. And, of course, the command shell was a machine code debugger, but that really wasn't hugely weird in itself.

endgame 12y ago

What a lovely, strange and reflective piece.

lotharbot 12y ago

It's both beautiful writing, and beautiful screenshots. Something in me jumped for joy as I was scrolling, and I didn't even have most of those systems (went from a TRS-80 Model 1 to a Sanyo MBC-550 to a 386 running MS-DOS 6.22, and then on to a bunch of variants of Windows.)

stevewilhelm 12y ago

Hella enterprise software was written and shipped on i386-based PCs running Windows NT.

cowabunga 12y ago

Oh it's certainly memorable after spending three hours arguing with COM interop today! :(

ribs 12y ago

I'm thinking more of William Gibson - BTW his new novel is available - but - yeah.