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Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
We lost the environment where the whole OS was a debugger, and everything could be inspected and modified as the system was running.
Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
We lost the environment where the whole OS was a debugger, and everything could be inspected and modified as the system was running.
One practical downside is that the live editing / code & continue / source code-free operation (mentioned in the Interlisp-D segment of the video) could lead to needing "just the right image" with all the installed definitions you wanted. Sometimes "source code" might not even exist which could lead to coordination issues.
Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
We lost the environment where the whole OS was a debugger, and everything could be inspected and modified as the system was running.
This talk looks pretty epic. I'm glad this discussion is being injected into the mainstream. I wish every one had an opportunity to use a network computing environment such as MIT Athena once in their lives. The original plan wasn't simply to grant blanket licenses for science and simulation software to users in the academic community. But create a true edtech platform that could be used to learn anything: languages,…
Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
We lost the environment where the whole OS was a debugger, and everything could be inspected and modified as the system was running.
How does the privilege separation work for that environment?
(mostly rhetorical questions)
Here a demo with a minesweeper clone i once made to discover Pharo: https://files.catbox.moe/jggff7.webm
It was really amazing but i didn't went further than that; Using Pharo quickly felt like being on a secluded island.
More about Pharo: https://pharo.org/features
Did we really “lose” the Lisp Machine, or did we just realize that compiling Lisp to a general-purpose instruction set like x86 and then having someone else in charge of creating hardware to efficiently execute that is much more clever?
We lost the environment where the whole OS was a debugger, and everything could be inspected and modified as the system was running.
Here are some features of IntelliJ that are reminiscent of a single-address-space fully reflective operating system:
• A multi-language scripting console that lets you access arbitrary parts of the IDE and give it interactive commands, either via its real API or (using reflection) anything else:
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/ide-scripting-console.ht...
• An interactive debugger that can debug any app, including the IDE itself. Of course it can be risky to use breakpoints as you might suspend the debugger you're using and get stuck, but that's a conceptual issue, not a technical one.
• An interactive auto-completing command line like thing for commands, files, symbols, menu items etc. Double-shift opens it for me.
• Real-time CPU, memory and task monitors. Try opening the command palette, type CPU and then pick "CPU and memory live charts", or search for "activity monitor" and open it.
• A fully virtualized filesystem layer with sophisticated file explorer. You can explore 'into' files at the structural/symbolic level.
• Obviously it's the JVM so everything is fully garbage collected.
• A whole UI framework that supports both tiling and floating windows.
• The ability to load, unload and upgrade apps (plugins) on the fly without restarts. They can alter the behaviour of the environment and other plugins, either via real APIs or by the big hammer of loading a JVM agent on the fly. JVM agents can rewrite code in any arbitrary way and swap it into the app as it's running.
And you can program it with Lisp if you really want to, via Clojure. I watched the talk, it was a nice talk, but I couldn't help feeling that the answer to "What have we lost?" is actually - cynically - not much. Those environments had some interesting ideas and the good ones seem to have made it into production, just not via custom hardware and operating systems.
Edit: interesting how quick this hit -1. I think a lot of people like the idea of lost treasures in computing. I used to like it too. But I can't identify something these machines or operating systems do that is strictly superior to modern technology or large-scale 'operating environments' like IntelliJ.