Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
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Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
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Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#2We have one of these sitting in the lobby at my office, used as a coffee table.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#3We have one of these sitting in the lobby at my office, used as a coffee table.
If it is functional(and maybe if not), you can potentially get a decent amount of money from selling that.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#4Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't.
Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator running), and learn. That system lost, and it's never coming back, but you can learn from what they did well when building your own system.
But when you have, don't complain about the inferiority of our systems. It may be true (I can't get the emulator running to find out), but it gets annoying pretty fast. Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#5For a very early overview of the technology I would recommend the 3600 Technical Summary. The 3600 was the first machine which was mostly designed by Symbolics. It was followed by three more generations (gate array processor, micro-processor and a virtual machine) of CPUs with something like 20+ further models.
I once used a 3600. :-) It greets with "Yes, master" when you turn it on.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/symbolics/3600_series...
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#6Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator ru…
You act like I have the skill, time, and motivation to build my own system.
It is perfectly valid to tell the creators of the systems you use that you'd would prefer them to be more like X.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#7Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator ru…
Bret Victor, The Future of Programming
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#8Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator ru…
You act like I have the skill, time, and motivation to build my own system. It is perfectly valid to tell the creators of the systems you use that you'd would prefer them to be more like X.
I know that, but telling everybody who expresses any preference for any system that system X is obviously far superior is really annoying.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#9Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator ru…
You would not know that GNU Emacs has a shitty UI, if people would not tell you.
> Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better.
It's not easy, but people are/were doing it: CMUCL, SBCL, McCLIM, Mezzano, the commercial Lisp systems like LispWorks and Allegro CL, ... all of them were/are efforts to bring some of the ideas/features. People were even developing emulators for the various Lisp Machines to make some of the old software runnable. MIT open sourced their original Lisp Machine software.
One of the most important things currently is to preserve the history of these and other machines / operating systems / applications. So that they are not lost and people can study them and learn. Lots of stuff is already lost.
Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum
#10Symbolics made some really cool tech. I just wish everybody would stop complaining about it. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, nothing modern can ever compare, not even Emacs, an environment arising from the same culture. Yes, we who experienced The Glory of the Lispm must eternally genuflect before it, condescending to anybody who didn't. Instead, go look at what Symbolics did (or try: it's quite hard to get the emulator ru…
You would not know that GNU Emacs has a shitty UI, if people would not tell you. > Take the energy you would use doing that, and put it into making your system that much better. It's not easy, but people are/were doing it: CMUCL, SBCL, McCLIM, Mezzano, the commercial Lisp systems like LispWorks and Allegro CL, ... all of them were/are efforts to bring some of the ideas/features. People were even developing emulators…
I was plenty aware that Emacs had a crummy UI. I just don't think it matters as much as you do. I said as much.
>It's not easy, but people are/were doing it...
That's actually great. I'm tremendously excited by those systems. I tend to prefer Scheme to CL (less cruft), but I'm excited all the same. Those systems and environments are really cool.
Although it is telling that SLIME (which is excellent, by the way) is one of the most popular ways to write Lisp code.