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Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

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Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#51

Post by thweoru23432 »

musicale wrote: post #40

It's amazing that this magazine issue is still (somewhat) relevant and interesting 43 years after its initial publication. (I note that HN frequently has posts on Lisp as well as 8-bit systems.) Other than HN, is there anything equivalent to BYTE in the modern era? I do like magazines like Linux Format and RasPi, but they're focused on Linux and Raspberry Pi whereas BYTE seems to have covered all "small systems" from…

Actually, that might be evidence that there really hasn't been much progress in Systems/PL.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#52

Post by musicale »

thweoru23432 wrote: post #51
musicale wrote: post #40

It's amazing that this magazine issue is still (somewhat) relevant and interesting 43 years after its initial publication. (I note that HN frequently has posts on Lisp as well as 8-bit systems.) Other than HN, is there anything equivalent to BYTE in the modern era? I do like magazines like Linux Format and RasPi, but they're focused on Linux and Raspberry Pi whereas BYTE seems to have covered all "small systems" from…

Actually, that might be evidence that there really hasn't been much progress in Systems/PL.

C++ seems to have made some progress in the last few decades. Python improves on BASIC in some ways. Java, JavaScript, Swift, and Rust have memory safety like Lisp, PL/I and Ada did.

But I tend to agree - the biggest advances seem to be in hardware: now you can run Unix on an internet-connected watch, voice recognition/translation/automatic transcription on a mobile phone, and real-time ray tracing on a game console.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#53

Post by sizzzzlerz »

protomyth wrote: post #10

I loved the old Byte issues with the fun covers (I still want to buy prints of a couple like the AI and Smalltalk covers). This particular one was a bit funny because my mom thought it was more of that D&D crap[1]. Thinking about it, reading the DMG and articles about Lisp, might make me think she had a point. 1) I should point out that my parents never bought into that whole D&D is evil craze. Star Frontiers was "cu…

Byte, in it's heyday, had the best cover illustrations of any magazine published before or since.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#54

Post by BeetleB »

KerrAvon wrote: post #30
projectramo wrote: post #29

Love these ads. There were almost as many computer companies back then as there are crypto currencies now. For a mere $1595, you got a 16k computer with microsoft basic but the best part is that it comes with 2 Z80 chips. Not sure how much a Z80 chip cost but surely the user would prefer an extra 8k or whatever. Best part is that you get to learn how the computer works by building it. You can see why user testing is…

There are things I don't miss about the era -- good riddance to floppy disks and hard drive crashes -- but the PC world pre-IBM had so much latent possibility and sometimes just plain weird stuff: http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/cpm/IMSAI_pre-history.... > A major advance was announced in a press release dated October 25, 1975 in which the young specialty firm offered a relatively new and promising concept. The…

> good riddance to floppy disks and hard drive crashes

When did HD crashes go away? I still suffer through them.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#55

Post by bmitc »

susam wrote: post #13

The second article in this issue of BYTE has a delightful mention of Logo (the programming language). On page 20, it says, "LOGO is, up to surface structure, more or less equivalent to LISP." It further says, "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint ) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world." And…

> "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world."

Whelp, the lack of an Oxford comma there really through me for a loop until I continued reading. Anyway...

> "Our experiences, especially with young students, indicate that programming in LOGO may serve as a bridge between natural language communication and reasoning and the formal and abstract symbols and reasoning in mathematics and programming languages."

If anyone is interested in this, there are the following books:

* Exploring Language with Logo: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262570653

* Visual Modeling with Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694

* Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...

* Computer Science Logo Style: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve, and I find it a bit sad that many kids are getting introduced to programming via something like Python or Scratch. I feel there's still space for Logo, and it would be cool to see an easily downloadable and installable version of it.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#56

Post by jgerrish »

thweoru23432 wrote: post #51
musicale wrote: post #40

It's amazing that this magazine issue is still (somewhat) relevant and interesting 43 years after its initial publication. (I note that HN frequently has posts on Lisp as well as 8-bit systems.) Other than HN, is there anything equivalent to BYTE in the modern era? I do like magazines like Linux Format and RasPi, but they're focused on Linux and Raspberry Pi whereas BYTE seems to have covered all "small systems" from…

Actually, that might be evidence that there really hasn't been much progress in Systems/PL.

I continually find new features of programming languages.

Covid, my time in this house, and the people I was with, gave me a chance to explore Scheme and CLOS derivatives (GOOPS). It's a joy to work with, and it helps me understand Ruby and other later developments. The different hooks it gives you into your hierarchy really map out the space that's possible.

It would be nice to lose myself in BYTE. It was influential. But it feels wrong somehow? Maybe that's on me. Maybe someday I'll write a BYTE random-page generator service.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#57

Post by dreamcompiler »

housel wrote: post #31

I have a hard copy of this issue; it predated my subscription to Byte by a couple years, but I was able to purchase it as a back issue some time in the early 80s.

I threw out most of my Byte magazines from that era a long time ago (got tired of moving them around; they're big and heavy), but this issue and the Smalltalk one are two that I kept.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#58

Post by PaulHoule »

thweoru23432 wrote: post #49
zozbot234 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even "languages built around AOT compilation" are increasingly blurring the phase distinction between "ahead-of-time" and "at runtime", via increased use of metaprogramming and constant evaluation facilities. We may end up with a state of things where even some "AOT-language" programs are written to do much of their work at compile time, perhaps adding more and more of those facilities that were formerly allowed only…

"Metaprogramming" is a very broad term. Templates etc. might be nice, but it's hardly anything compared to what you can do with Lisp macros (there's an orthogonal issue that this power leads to unreadable code; see "Lisp Curse", but ignore it for now.).

There is this project

https://github.com/paulhoule/ferocity/

which I might finish up when I'm done with the report I'm writing. It is possible to create Java expression trees with trees of static method calls that look a lot like S-expressions and stick them together into statements, methods and classes.

You should be able to do the same tricks people do with LISP macros and it could work code generation miracles but it would have that "LISP curse" problem in spades.

The plan is to generate a code generator that is sufficient to generate the full DSL implementation (ferocity0) and use that to generate the full implementation (ferocity.)

I have some tests for ferocity0 writing .java files to get fed to javac and for ferocity0 running expression trees with a primitive interpreter. Already the type system is enriched over the type system because interpreted ferocity0 can handle Java expressions as a type at run time so you get issues like quoting and unquoting in LISP.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#59

Post by PaulHoule »

bmitc wrote: post #55
susam wrote: post #13

The second article in this issue of BYTE has a delightful mention of Logo (the programming language). On page 20, it says, "LOGO is, up to surface structure, more or less equivalent to LISP." It further says, "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint ) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world." And…

> "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world." Whelp, the lack of an Oxford comma there really through me for a loop until I continued reading. Anyway... > "Our experiences, especially with young students, indicate that programming in LOGO may serve as a brid…

Scratch was produced at MIT just like Logo and I think it is an evolution of what they were trying to do with Logo.

Re: Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)

#60

Post by reaperducer »

KerrAvon wrote: post #32
reaperducer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine? No. Remember? Yes. And this in an era where there was no such thing as package tracking. You got your stuff when you got your stuff. I've ordered a few things mail order this year because they were not available any other way. The wait doesn't bother me. Order confirmation comes when the bank tells me the check has been cashed. But the lack of package tracking causes mild anxiety.

Wow, what can you still order by mail but not online?

Most of it was art. Some from the artists. Some from auctions. When you get to a certain grade and price of certain items, online becomes a liability, not an asset. Too many scammers, I presume.

Also, some hand-made things. Custom paper and such.

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