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Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

danweinreb.org

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Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#31

Post by bayesianhorse »

zeckalpha wrote: post #29
arethuza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit harsh - I actually moved from mostly doing Common Lisp development (on DEC Alpha workstations) to Java development in early '95 and I really liked Java back then - I was as passionate about it as people are today about Go/CoffeeScript/Haskell. Java, at least at the start, really was something fresh and good. Sure it became a horrible bloated mess - but isn't that the doom that faces all succesful…

That's why "Haskell avoids success at all costs".

And it seems to be very good at this!

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#32

Post by cafard »

I highly recommend the book Patterns of Software for which the link is given here. It includes the story of Lucid's troubles, which were similar to Symbolic's, though Lucid was not in the hardware business. Quite apart from that, it is well worth reading.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#33

Post by __--__ »

outworlder wrote: post #24
dschiptsov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbolics stuff not just worked, it worked remarkably well on the very modest hardware and solved real word problems. For an example of unimaginable by "modern standards" quality , go ahead and take a look at the Common Lisp documentation produced by Symbolics (the art of writing, "motorcycle maintenance" kind of clarity and conscience) which is buried somewhere inside bitsavers and take a look at the sources of Open…

Everything in the Java language is done so as to prevent clueless people from messing up too much. It is an useful goal, but it impairs creativity and productivity. Complex concepts are either not implemented or forbidden outright. This is even in contrast to its closest competitor, which is C#. The latter has evolved a lot since its creation, while in the Java world lambdas are the hot new thing. But hey, you can hi…

For corporations, consistant work is often more desirable than exceptional work. Amassing thousands of lines of code that only exceptional programmers can use, understand and modify is a liability, not an asset, no matter how efficient it is.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#34

Post by Zigurd »

I knew several of the Symbolics founding group, especially the engineers, but several of the management team as well. The tl;dr in the article comes here:

Meanwhile, back at Symbolics, there were huge internal management conflicts, leading to the resignation of much of top management, who were replaced by the board of directors with new CEO’s who did not do a good job, and did not have the vision to see what was happening.

Symbolics was supposed to be the consensus Next Big Thing. A rival to Sun. A gravy train.

There were titanic egos and divas among the engineers, too. A physical expression of which here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard But several of them are also remembered for big contributions to the industry.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#35

Post by lispm »

qohen wrote: post #30
tsmith5432 wrote: post #23

I worked in an expert systems company in the 80s (one mentioned in the Phillips thesis referenced in the danweinreb article). Take all this with a dose of IIRC. As part of out work, we evaluated and benchmarked Xerox Interlisp machines, Symbolics systems, VAXen, later Gold Hill etc. to find a cost-effective delivery platform. We even eventually funded the development of a delivery-focused subset of Common Lisp. One a…

There's lots more to be said about the late 80s collapse of AI (ES) applications and expectations On that subject, Richard Gabriel [1] writes about his experiences as a founder of Lucid, which produced Common Lisp for regular Unix workstations, in the "Into the Ground: Lisp" chapter of his book, "Patterns of Software", which is available as a free PDF from his web site [2]. (Lucid's pivot to developing a C++ environm…

Lucid CL was a very nice implementation. Maintenance is still available for it. It's now called Liquid CL and maintenance comes from the LispWorks guys.

Lucid took the money they earned and invested it into some ill-fated and ill-designed C++ environment. Lisp competitors from that time, Franz Inc. and LispWorks are still in business.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#36

Post by nabla9 »

dschiptsov wrote: post #8

Exactly why Java succeed - the world is dominated by mediocrity while idiots are mostly on management positions. This is why all we got nowadays are Windows PCs with Java. It "worth us" or "suits us well". Designers were too smart (consider David Moon) while management was "as usual".

"We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp."

- Guy Steele, Java spec co-author

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#37

Post by anandroiddev »

lmm wrote: post #13
dschiptsov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do google for "Jazelle".)

I'd very much like to see a similar retrospective on why Jazelle failed.

Are you asking about the proprietary ARM instruction set extension for speeding up interpreting Java bytecodes? It failed because JITs were faster, so as soon as devices had enough RAM/Flash/CPU to JIT they stopped using Jazelle.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#38

Post by pjmlp »

BruceM wrote: post #25
dschiptsov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbolics stuff not just worked, it worked remarkably well on the very modest hardware and solved real word problems. For an example of unimaginable by "modern standards" quality , go ahead and take a look at the Common Lisp documentation produced by Symbolics (the art of writing, "motorcycle maintenance" kind of clarity and conscience) which is buried somewhere inside bitsavers and take a look at the sources of Open…

Running Open Genera in a VM is quite an eye-opening experience. Such a very different vision of computing and what is possible.

Yes, this is why I sayed in another thread here in HN that UNIX made the industry do a left turn.

Lisp Machines I only know through videos and old papers. But I do have experience with Smalltalk during my CS degree, before Java was a thing.

Smalltalk is by no means Lisp, but shares a few ideas.

If those systems had become mainstream, computing would probably be like Bret Victor discusses on his "Future of Programming" talk.

Instead we have developers still using systems as if UNIX had been released last year.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#39

Post by pjmlp »

arethuza wrote: post #22
dschiptsov wrote: post #8

Exactly why Java succeed - the world is dominated by mediocrity while idiots are mostly on management positions. This is why all we got nowadays are Windows PCs with Java. It "worth us" or "suits us well". Designers were too smart (consider David Moon) while management was "as usual".

I think that's a bit harsh - I actually moved from mostly doing Common Lisp development (on DEC Alpha workstations) to Java development in early '95 and I really liked Java back then - I was as passionate about it as people are today about Go/CoffeeScript/Haskell. Java, at least at the start, really was something fresh and good. Sure it became a horrible bloated mess - but isn't that the doom that faces all succesful…

Same here, I remember how fresh it felt by bringing GC to the masses and providing a more consistent experience across platforms than C or C++ were capable of, with their compiler specific behaviours, extensions and catching up with the ongoing standardization efforts.

Re: Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)

#40

Post by angersock »

dschiptsov wrote: post #15
brazzy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the world is dominated by stuff that works and solves real problems . It doesn't care for how much smarter than all those mediocre idiots you think you are. It offers lots of opportunities for very smart people who mistake their mental masturbation for unstoppable genius to be very, very stupid.

Symbolics stuff not just worked, it worked remarkably well on the very modest hardware and solved real word problems. For an example of unimaginable by "modern standards" quality , go ahead and take a look at the Common Lisp documentation produced by Symbolics (the art of writing, "motorcycle maintenance" kind of clarity and conscience) which is buried somewhere inside bitsavers and take a look at the sources of Open…

Symbolics stuff not just worked, it worked remarkably well on the very modest hardware and solved real word problems.

Sadly, sadly, that's not enough. Oftentimes, that doesn't even matter.

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