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Why we need Lisp machines

fultonsramblings.substack.com

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Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#121

Post by chubot »

Jtsummers wrote: post #58
chubot wrote: post #48

Meh the problem is "Which Lisp?" There are dozens of incompatible Lisps. Even this site is written in a Lisp dialect written by its author (Arc). In fact I conjecture that this is the reason Unix is more popular than Lisp -- because Lisps don't interoperate well. They haven't built up a big ecosystem of reusable code. Whereas Python, JavaScript, R, C, C++, and Rust programmers can reuse each others' code via Unix-sty…

> Honest question: how do you communicate between two Lisp processes on two different machines? I know Clojure has EDN (which is sort of like JSON : JavaScript), but I haven't heard of the solutions for other Lisps. Probably TCP or UDP based protocols like essentially every cross-network communication in every language today. EDIT: Also, it should be noted that JSON does not, itself, allow you to communicate across a…

Right, so that is what I'm getting at. If you have two Lisp programs on different machines, or two programs written in different Lisp dialects, the way you compose them is basically "Unix" -- serialize to some common format and send over a pipe / socket.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#122

Post by Gollapalli »

GregorMendel wrote: post #104
reikonomusha wrote: post #46

I'm as big of a Lisp fan as can be. I'm a proud owner of Symbolics and TI hardware: a MicroExplorer, a MacIvory, two 3650, and two 3620. Not to mention an AlphaServer running OpenGenera. Today, we have computers that run Lisp orders of magnitude faster than any of those Lisp machines. And we have about 3–4 orders of magnitude more memory with 64-bits of integer and floating point goodness. And Lisp is touted to have…

Anyone interested in the computing holes that can be filled by lisp machines should check out Urbit. There is an vibrant and growing community of people building a network of personal servers running a lisp-like functional OS. It uses an identity system secured by the Ethereum blockchain and it has created a bottom up economic incentive for developers to participate. They are starting to solve unique problems that co…

And it's 4x more expensive than it was supposed to be to buy a planet.

Ethereum was a mistake.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#123

Post by scj »

zozbot234 wrote: post #66
chubot wrote: post #48

Meh the problem is "Which Lisp?" There are dozens of incompatible Lisps. Even this site is written in a Lisp dialect written by its author (Arc). In fact I conjecture that this is the reason Unix is more popular than Lisp -- because Lisps don't interoperate well. They haven't built up a big ecosystem of reusable code. Whereas Python, JavaScript, R, C, C++, and Rust programmers can reuse each others' code via Unix-sty…

An unappreciated means of code reuse under *nix is the static and dynamic library. This seems to be the go-to whenever you need something more involved than simply reusing a full binary via pipes.

C's greatest feature is that it trivially maps onto .so files. Linking to and creating .so files isn't just cheap, it's effectively free.

Most higher level languages I've worked with seem to focus on using .so files rather than producing them.

This means the lowest common denominator for the unix ecosystem is what C can provide. Otherwise stated, unix is marching forward at the pace of C.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#125

Post by coryrc »

reikonomusha wrote: post #67
zozbot234 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't "need" Lisp machines. We "need" Lisp software. What made a Lisp machines extraordinary wasn't the hardware, it was the software. Nothing today is impeding one from writing such software, except time, energy, willpower, and/or money. Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800520 The main issue is that Lisp, for all its inherent "power", has very limited tools for enforcing modularity boundari…

I think many people have conjectures, such as this one, but I don't think it's a tech problem, or a "Lisp is too powerful for its own good" problem. It's a "people aren't writing software" problem. History has demonstrated umpteen times that developing large, sophisticated, maintained, and maintainable projects in Lisp is entirely and demonstrably possible. Modern Common Lisp coding practices gravitate toward modular…

> people aren't writing software

Maybe not OSS, but somebody is keeping Lispworks and Franz in business.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#126

Post by PaulHoule »

DonHopkins wrote: post #45
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

What ramblings. Optane is the best performing SSD but the worst performing RAM you ever had. It is too expensive at any speed, even if Intel is losing money on it. HP memristors are vaporware. LISP machines, Java machines, and similar architectures specialized for complex language runtimes are a notorious dead end. They just can’t keep up with performance-optimized RISC, pipelined, superscalar, SIMD, etc. architectur…

How is the ARM not a "JavaScript Machine"? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50966676/why-do-arm-chip... >Why do ARM chips have an instruction with Javascript in the name (FJCVTZS)? https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...

That instruction is a very small hack that uses just a few transistors to speed up a bit of data conversion that JS runtimes do frequently. That’s a far cry from a specialized chip.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#127

Post by convolvatron »

GregorMendel wrote: post #104
reikonomusha wrote: post #46

I'm as big of a Lisp fan as can be. I'm a proud owner of Symbolics and TI hardware: a MicroExplorer, a MacIvory, two 3650, and two 3620. Not to mention an AlphaServer running OpenGenera. Today, we have computers that run Lisp orders of magnitude faster than any of those Lisp machines. And we have about 3–4 orders of magnitude more memory with 64-bits of integer and floating point goodness. And Lisp is touted to have…

Anyone interested in the computing holes that can be filled by lisp machines should check out Urbit. There is an vibrant and growing community of people building a network of personal servers running a lisp-like functional OS. It uses an identity system secured by the Ethereum blockchain and it has created a bottom up economic incentive for developers to participate. They are starting to solve unique problems that co…

i associate lisp machines with power, simplicity, and a delightfully shallow learning curve.

urbit to me is exactly the opposite

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#128

Post by johnny22 »

throw10920 wrote: post #105
zozbot234 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't "need" Lisp machines. We "need" Lisp software. What made a Lisp machines extraordinary wasn't the hardware, it was the software. Nothing today is impeding one from writing such software, except time, energy, willpower, and/or money. Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30800520 The main issue is that Lisp, for all its inherent "power", has very limited tools for enforcing modularity boundari…

> The main issue is that Lisp, for all its inherent "power", has very limited tools for enforcing modularity boundaries in code and "programming in the large" I don't see any mention of "modular" or "boundaries" in the post you linked, so I'm assuming that it doesn't add extra context to your point. You say "very limited tools for enforcing modularity boundaries", which I'm going to assume means that you believe that…

What do you think it is?

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#129

Post by convolvatron »

chubot wrote: post #48

Meh the problem is "Which Lisp?" There are dozens of incompatible Lisps. Even this site is written in a Lisp dialect written by its author (Arc). In fact I conjecture that this is the reason Unix is more popular than Lisp -- because Lisps don't interoperate well. They haven't built up a big ecosystem of reusable code. Whereas Python, JavaScript, R, C, C++, and Rust programmers can reuse each others' code via Unix-sty…

> Honest question: how do you communicate between two Lisp processes on two different machines?

using continuations with sexps is insanely powerful

send (+ 1 3 (lambda (x) `(handle-response, x)))

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#130

Post by convolvatron »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #57
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Just run Emacs as your Lisp Virtual Machine. All it really needs is a good editor, but evil-mode is kinda serviceable.

I have had this thought. Jokes about needing a good editor aside, I wondered about making a unikernal that bootstraps enough to start emacs. The issue I see with the idea of lisp-all-the-way-down is that most people don’t want to write filesystems and device drivers. I know I don’t. I mean I find them fascinating, but I usually have a specific app I want to write. I don’t want to write device drivers on my way there.

you could do this with nanos...but i dont know how that would benefit you
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