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Why we need Lisp machines

fultonsramblings.substack.com

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Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#11

Post by pjmlp »

mportela wrote: post #7

This post would benefit from further expanding some of these statements. > UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse Why exactly? > A new operating system means we can explore new ideas in new ways. LISP machines were not only OSes but also hardware. Is the author also proposing running this OS on optimized hardware or simply using our x86-64/AMD/M1 CPUs? > With lisp machines, we can cut out the complicat…

Xerox PARC workstations could run Interlisp-D, Smalltalk, Mesa/XDE, Mesa/Cedar, thanks to this little thing RISC failed to kill, microcoded CPUs.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#12

Post by daniel-cussen »

So it's interesting to note modern hardware is only 60x faster than Lisp machines when it should be 1000x. Weirdness of Lisp, turns out hardware isn't some random thing. And harder to compromise than modern stuff, by a huge amount, real actual security improvement.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#13

Post by zozbot234 »

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…

The RISC-V folks are working on additions for special support of "complex language runtimes". Pipelined, SIMD and superscalar are all well and good, but what kills pure software-side support is always heavy branching and dispatching. These operations are genuinely much faster and more power-efficient when implemented in hardware.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#14

Post by traverseda »

mportela wrote: post #7

This post would benefit from further expanding some of these statements. > UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse Why exactly? > A new operating system means we can explore new ideas in new ways. LISP machines were not only OSes but also hardware. Is the author also proposing running this OS on optimized hardware or simply using our x86-64/AMD/M1 CPUs? > With lisp machines, we can cut out the complicat…

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse

>Why exactly?

Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to.

An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly under wayland, and never will due to wayland's security choices.

So like, what am I supposed to do here? Not run android apps? Not use tools like barrier/synergy/x2x?

This is one of many many frustrations I've had from this new generation of wayland/systemd/etc. Hopefully it gets better eventually but it does feel a lot like the rug is constantly being pulled out from under me for no good reason...

Now I don't think a lisp machine is going to fix that mind you, but it is a concern.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#15

Post by zozbot234 »

traverseda wrote: post #14
mportela wrote: post #7

This post would benefit from further expanding some of these statements. > UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse Why exactly? > A new operating system means we can explore new ideas in new ways. LISP machines were not only OSes but also hardware. Is the author also proposing running this OS on optimized hardware or simply using our x86-64/AMD/M1 CPUs? > With lisp machines, we can cut out the complicat…

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to. An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly unde…

You can actually start a Wayland compositor/session in a X window. That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#16

Post by traverseda »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
traverseda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to. An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly unde…

You can actually start a Wayland compositor/session in a X window. That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough.

That's what I'm doing now, but it's a pretty bad user experience and definitely isn't seamless. Also completely breaks any integration with my app menu meaning I have to rewrite all the desktop files to launch the app in cage. I imagine someone will eventually make a seamless wayland compositor for x though.

>That plus existing solutions for Wayland network transparency should be enough.

If you're saying it will fix my x2x use case, well it won't. Wayland's security model fundamentally prevents this use case. Maybe someone will add extensions to it eventually but right now the way compositors handle mouse capture seriously prevents this use case, and I'm skeptical that all the different compositors will agree on a solution any time in the next 10 years...

So I'm stuck using X on both displays for the foreseeable future if I want to use x2x/synergy like functionality, and I'm certain that it's going to become harder and harder to keep using X over time...

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#17

Post by [deleted] »

imglorp wrote: post #8
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…

Speed is relevant for some use cases, sure, but not at all for a ton of others. Memory, disk and CPU are almost free in this new world, so why are we computing like it's 1990 still? It's time for some different abstractions than file -> process -> file. The vast productivity gains of Smalltalk and Lisp were because they discarded those abstractions and programmers were free for others. Presumably OP posted this after…

[deleted]

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#18

Post by scroot »

Leaving the specific idea of the Lisp Machine aside, today there we have a tremendous advantage over the past when it comes to creating the kind of full, self-consistent systems Lisp Machines -- and systems like Smalltalk or Oberon, etc -- represent. Today we have widely accepted communications and data format standards. This is something that really isolated system diversity in the past, where you were "stuck" in some given computing system and had little ways of interacting with other types of computing systems. We have figured all of that out.

We should hope to see a flourishing of new and diverse systems again, since now all one need to do to interact with everyone else is merely (and I know it's a slog) implement tried and true standards.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#19

Post by sseagull »

traverseda wrote: post #14
mportela wrote: post #7

This post would benefit from further expanding some of these statements. > UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse Why exactly? > A new operating system means we can explore new ideas in new ways. LISP machines were not only OSes but also hardware. Is the author also proposing running this OS on optimized hardware or simply using our x86-64/AMD/M1 CPUs? > With lisp machines, we can cut out the complicat…

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to. An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly unde…

I am finding that everything is just becoming more and more fragmented. Programming languages, ecosystems, frameworks, blah.

I have had ideas for some applications, but can’t do them because the libraries I need are written in different languages, which don’t interoperate well (and one I am not familiar in).

Every post here looking for recommendations has many responses with different packages/ecosystems doing the same thing.

Sometimes I feel like there are too many developers and not enough of them really interested in the actual hard problems. So they just make another python package manager or webapp framework.

Re: Why we need Lisp machines

#20

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sseagull wrote: post #19
traverseda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> UNIX isn’t good enough anymore and it’s getting worse >Why exactly? Personally? We're in a bit of a transition point, and a lot of the technologies aren't working together like they used to. An example, on my laptop I want to run android apps. The way to do this that actually works well (waydroid) only supports wayland. Unfortunately I use x2x to control another display remotely, and x2x doesn't work properly unde…

I am finding that everything is just becoming more and more fragmented. Programming languages, ecosystems, frameworks, blah. I have had ideas for some applications, but can’t do them because the libraries I need are written in different languages, which don’t interoperate well (and one I am not familiar in). Every post here looking for recommendations has many responses with different packages/ecosystems doing the sa…

So a perfect use-case for the obligatory XKCD post about "too many standards, invent one more to try to solve the issue => too many standards plus one".
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