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Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

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Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#131

Post by mikelevins »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #79
setpatchaddress wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we limit our perspective to the duration of Jobs's lifetime, the Apple I, II, III, and the entire Macintosh line never required a tithe to Apple for releasing software. (You can argue about the cost of developer tools / the developer program for the Mac, but you'd be wrong, since (a) those were never profitable for Apple and (b) people could and did use third party development tools.) HyperCard development flounde…

I'm not sure what your point is? Dead is dead, even if it's just been left to die instead of being enhanced or re-released. Re. not requiring a tithe to Apple, it's significant that their most popular OS (by orders of magnitude?): * requires a tithe * is not user programmable

Well, but you initially said that HyperCard "had to die", presumably because it was user-programmable. You seem to be implying that Apple had a conscious policy of opposing user programming.

That definitely was not the case at the time HyperCard was being developed. I know because I was there. I even worked on the HyperCard team for a while.

HyperCard's troubles had nothing to do with an Apple policy against user programmability, and everything to do with the fact that management couldn't figure out how to make it into a product that paid for itself.

If you want to argue that Apple has a policy against user programming now, well, maybe they do. I don't know. The last time I worked there was in the 1990s. But they didn't have any such policy when HyperCard was being shipped.

Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#132

Post by JBiserkov »

shakna wrote: post #47
JBiserkov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully Rich Hickey & co wrote Clojure so we can program on a modern Lisp in the Java Virtual Machine and in the browser! (ClojureScript) (even the .NET CLR is supported) [1] http://clojure.org [2] http://clojurescript.org

Though it kind of sucks that Tail Call Elimination is such a difficult task on the JVM. Scheme kind of gets you thinking in a way that works iteratively, but gets expressed recursively. Its easy to read, and can make for some great optimisation without being premature. The JVM does not really support this style of programming - despite LISP's syntax leading towards it.

Funny enough, it seems JavaScript will get TCO before Java. JavaScript, for f*ck's sake! This will provide even more argumentative power to the people who claim JavaScript is 'Scheme in C clothes'.

Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#133

Post by lispm »

mikelevins wrote: post #129
lispm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BASIC in the old times, maybe?

BASIC was a product for Apple customers; as far as I know it was never a mainstream choice for writing system or application software at Apple. The first 6502 assembler I ever used was written in BASIC, but that was on a Commodore machine, not an Apple machine.

I was thinking that too, but I think to remember that they wrote some apps with it. Educational stuff, etc.

Woz mentions some apps:

http://www.woz.org/letters/apple-basic

Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#134

Post by PeCaN »

analognoise wrote: post #72
PeCaN wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at software today, I'm note sure we're perf-obsessed enough actually. Fortunately, simpler, faster, and more powerful all go hand in hand if you pick the right abstractions. And I am building something better—think AS/400 with an APL-inspired Forth dialect. It is certainly alienating, but (hopefully) the system will have enough fun demos to hook people, and the language runs on other OSes to tempt people in.…

Do you have anything to show off of the other system you're working on? It sounds interesting.

Not a whole lot, no. There are some cryptic documents on the language and some various experiments I've done with the seL4 microkernel. Currently I'm working on getting the language solidified and the completing the implementation (and removing all the usual dependencies, so that it should be relatively straightforward to port to a fairly bare microkernel environment).

Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#135

Post by mikelevins »

lispm wrote: post #133
mikelevins wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BASIC was a product for Apple customers; as far as I know it was never a mainstream choice for writing system or application software at Apple. The first 6502 assembler I ever used was written in BASIC, but that was on a Commodore machine, not an Apple machine.

I was thinking that too, but I think to remember that they wrote some apps with it. Educational stuff, etc. Woz mentions some apps: http://www.woz.org/letters/apple-basic

Fair enough. That's interesting.

Re: Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum

#136

Post by kirghiz »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #8
mordocai wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Repeatedly telling someone that they are annoying is in itself quite annoying.

Any examples of your own lisp systems?

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