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Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

lispm.de

1–10 of 94 posts

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#6
Site's down, here's a pastebin of the text: http://pastebin.com/6kkCTgjg

Neither archive.org nor Google Cache have this. Weird.

Video from article: http://vimeo.com/83886950

Image 1: http://i.imgur.com/r62FSfE.jpg

Image 2: http://i.imgur.com/xsxutc3.png

Image 3: http://i.imgur.com/zL9DFbr.png

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#7
post #4

Sometimes I wonder how much better the computing would be if Lisp Machines had succeeded in the industry and UNIX never left the lab.

Considering most of the Internet was developed under UNIX machines, the alternate universe would be almost unrecognizable, for good or bad.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#9
post #4

Sometimes I wonder how much better the computing would be if Lisp Machines had succeeded in the industry and UNIX never left the lab.

Considering most of the Internet was developed under UNIX machines, the alternate universe would be almost unrecognizable, for good or bad.

Not necessarily. Convergent evolution is a thing.

Re: Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

#10
post #4

Sometimes I wonder how much better the computing would be if Lisp Machines had succeeded in the industry and UNIX never left the lab.

I personally think it would have proceeded at a slower pace, and would have been more expensive.

The tradeoffs may or may not have been worth it, but there seemed to be an obsession with doing it Right rather than doing it cheap and quick. Even today it would be financially beneficial to buy a $70k workstation over a $2k workstation for a developer if there was a significant boost to productivity; each developer costs you well over $70k per year, and you can't double your productivity by hiring twice as many developers.

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