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Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

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Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#1

Post by jacquesm »

What were they like to work with ?

How much effort was it to program them ?

How did they compare to the other machines available at the time ?

How do they compare with the machines available today ?

Other 'special' computing architecture experiments from that period would be nice to hear about as well!

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#2

Post by wooby »

I wish! Another progressive computing project I'm aware of in the same vein was Japan's "Fifth Generation Computer" initiative, which bore, among other things, a concurrent dialect of Prolog called KL0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#4

Post by jacquesm »

TriinT wrote: post #3

I never worked with Connection Machines, but I am also interested in them. If you haven't yet done so (which is unlikely), do take a look at Danny Hillis' PhD thesis: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5679

thank you, I'll do that!

right now reading this:

http://longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#5

Post by zzkt »

TriinT wrote: post #3

I never worked with Connection Machines, but I am also interested in them. If you haven't yet done so (which is unlikely), do take a look at Danny Hillis' PhD thesis: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5679

you might also want to crank up the Lisp (star lisp) simulator, more details of which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Lisp The common lisp code can be found at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang...

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#6

Post by TriinT »

jacquesm wrote: post #4
TriinT wrote: post #3

I never worked with Connection Machines, but I am also interested in them. If you haven't yet done so (which is unlikely), do take a look at Danny Hillis' PhD thesis: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5679

thank you, I'll do that! right now reading this: http://longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php

This blog post contains some interesting links:

http://stochastix.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/the-connection-ma...

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#7

Post by stevedekorte »

I did some FORTRAN 90 programming on a CM2 in the early 90s. FORTRAN 90 had a nice parallel array/matrix op syntax that mapped well to the CM2 but I actually ended up doing most of my work on a IBM RISC workstation because interactive access to small CPU was much more productive than waiting for a batch job to finish on a larger machine.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#8

Post by bitdiddle »

I worked on the Slymbolics 1200, as we called it affectionately, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics) in the late 80s. It was absolutely the best experience I've ever had programming. I still own shares in Symbolics. Had I known what was happening with RMS at that time and had been politically conscious enough to understand the issues I might not have used the machine. However as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#9

Post by jacquesm »

bitdiddle wrote: post #8

I worked on the Slymbolics 1200, as we called it affectionately, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics ) in the late 80s. It was absolutely the best experience I've ever had programming. I still own shares in Symbolics. Had I known what was happening with RMS at that time and had been politically conscious enough to understand the issues I might not have used the machine. However as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

> Had I known what was happening with RMS at that time and had been politically conscious enough to understand the issues I might not have used the machine.

What do you mean with that ?

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine?

#10

Post by bitdiddle »

jacquesm wrote: post #9
bitdiddle wrote: post #8

I worked on the Slymbolics 1200, as we called it affectionately, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics ) in the late 80s. It was absolutely the best experience I've ever had programming. I still own shares in Symbolics. Had I known what was happening with RMS at that time and had been politically conscious enough to understand the issues I might not have used the machine. However as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

> Had I known what was happening with RMS at that time and had been politically conscious enough to understand the issues I might not have used the machine. What do you mean with that ?

There's a summary here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman) under the section "Hacker culture declines". There's more detail in an RMS biography, the reference for which I don't have handy.
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