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Lisp Operating System (2015)

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Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#21

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

heisig wrote: post #9

Summary: - We don't need separate processes if the language we use is inherently safe (e.g., modern Common Lisp). - Without process isolation, it is possible to share large, complicated and possibly mutable data structures (graphs, arrays, user-defined objects) system-wide. - Once it is possible to cheaply share and communicate arbitrary data structures, it is pointless to maintain designated 'file system'. - Not hav…

> Not having a file system raises the question of what data should be persistent and what shouldn't. But on a modern computer, it is feasible to just treat all data as persistent (maybe excluding the youngest GC generation).

I'd be concerned about the UX issue of ephemeral vs. permanent changes here. I doubt that files and save/revert operations are the best we can do, but I think there's a lot of value in the fact that some pattern for it exists that's common to most applications. Perhaps this has already been tackled in some system that doesn't natively use the concept of disk files. It could be as simple as having a pattern to assign names to persistent copies of objects, or something more sophisticated like assigning names to points in an undo tree that are then transparently converted into self-contained objects when the tree is pruned.

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#22

Post by magicalhippo »

heisig wrote: post #9

Summary: - We don't need separate processes if the language we use is inherently safe (e.g., modern Common Lisp). - Without process isolation, it is possible to share large, complicated and possibly mutable data structures (graphs, arrays, user-defined objects) system-wide. - Once it is possible to cheaply share and communicate arbitrary data structures, it is pointless to maintain designated 'file system'. - Not hav…

> We don't need separate processes if the language we use is inherently safe (e.g., modern Common Lisp).

I note the year of the article, which was before Spectre and friends showed that this is not a reasonable assumption these days[1].

So does this mean LispOS is doomed?

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#23

Post by all2 »

scroot wrote: post #16
heisig wrote: post #9

Summary: - We don't need separate processes if the language we use is inherently safe (e.g., modern Common Lisp). - Without process isolation, it is possible to share large, complicated and possibly mutable data structures (graphs, arrays, user-defined objects) system-wide. - Once it is possible to cheaply share and communicate arbitrary data structures, it is pointless to maintain designated 'file system'. - Not hav…

Dan Ingalls wrote similarly in his Design Principles Behind Smalltalk [1], noting that "An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one." [1] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk....

That makes me reconsider the Plan9 OS, where everything is a file system.

Then, nothing fits in the language (C)?

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#24

Post by all2 »

TuringTest wrote: post #11
hnlmorg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my take away as well. Some interesting ideas - most of which aren't new - but the ideology felt very biased. To a fault even. I would still love to see a working version of this. Or even just a more traditional general computing OS but one which used FP (not necessarily LISP) as its primitive.

This article I read yesterday has one interesting take on what an OS designed on modern programming principles could look like. It has a loose treatment of technical FP terms, but the insights behind it are at least thought-provoking. https://medium.com/@reinman/monoids-to-groupoids-492c3510511... I believe we're in for a redesign of OS architectures, now that the 50's assumption of a single machine with a single OS…

The article reminds me of what Erlang is meant to do. With pure message passing wouldn't the need for some foo() calling some bar() be down to shooting off a message?

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#25

Post by somatic »

hnlmorg wrote: post #7
sagartewari01 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't name anything, they just provided a description.

I assumed his comment was a reference to the old "joke": > "Emacs is a great OS, but it lacks a decent text editor." The comment presumably made because emacs is extended with LISP.

Emacs is written in Emacs LISP, which is its own language. The really performance-critical stuff is written in C, as is the interpreter, but that’s it.

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#26

Post by 0x445442 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #18
varjag wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should mention that Mezzano OS satisfies most of these design points and already runs. https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

I wanted to also mention Mezzano - really easy to play with using VirtualBox. A bit off topic, but when I miss the environment of the Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine that I had from 1982 to about 1987, I find the closest thing today that offers a similar experience is Pharo Smalltalk.

I've had some user interface ideas I've wanted to explore floating around in my head for more than a decade. I' m now in a position to start exploring these ideas and after an extensive survey I decided to use Squeak. The deeper I get into this system the more appreciation I gain for the entire model.

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#27

Post by snaky »

hnlmorg wrote: post #7
sagartewari01 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't name anything, they just provided a description.

I assumed his comment was a reference to the old "joke": > "Emacs is a great OS, but it lacks a decent text editor." The comment presumably made because emacs is extended with LISP.

This joke 2.0 would be about ChromeOS and a decent web browser.

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#29

Post by gooseus »

hardtoreason wrote: post #28

I literally stalled on the first sentence where he asserts without any rationale that an OS written in Lisp "would be a good thing in itself". WHY WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK THIS MATTERS

I would, and it's based on a pretty simple philosophical/moral/spiritual belief:

Anything that increases and improves our knowledge of the universe - including knowledge of how to best use existing tools, and which tools to use for which jobs - is a good thing in and of itself (barring exceptions related to negative externalities which don't apply here).

I don't know if that's the author's rationale, but it's the one I would use.

Re: Lisp Operating System (2015)

#30

Post by 0x445442 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #8
pushpop wrote: post #5

I’m all for thinking outside the box but many of the complaints described in that are blamed on UNIX when in fact they were also adopted by a multitude of other non-UNIX platforms and reason they became common was because it simply made more sense for general computing. For example their “file system” (for want a better description) approach was tried on an IBM mainframe and it proved more cumbersome to maintain than…

That was my take away as well. Some interesting ideas - most of which aren't new - but the ideology felt very biased. To a fault even. I would still love to see a working version of this. Or even just a more traditional general computing OS but one which used FP (not necessarily LISP) as its primitive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk&t=397s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBfB2MJw3qg
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