[HN Gopher] My encounter with Medley Interlisp
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My encounter with Medley Interlisp
Author : mepian
Score : 61 points
Date : 2023-01-08 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journal.paoloamoroso.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journal.paoloamoroso.com)
| jshaqaw wrote:
| A Lisp Machine in my browser?!?! And just like that my coming
| week of productivity was lost. Awesome!
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I had a Xerox 1108 running Medley Interlisp (until I updated it
| to Common Lisp). Great memories, but I just can't get the same
| level of excitement running it on my MacBook in emulation mode.
| That said I 1000% appreciate the work that Larry and other people
| are doing to maintain it because it is my personal history.
|
| I write a lot about Lisp languages (and I offer free mentoring,
| and people often ask for Lisp advice) and for most people I
| actually recommend Racket Scheme as an introduction since it is a
| batteries included instant install on most platforms and the
| supplied IDE is pretty good. If anyone gets really interested in
| using Lisp, the big job is deciding which language and
| implementation to use. I love Common Lisp (LispWorks,
| SBCL+Emacs), Scheme (Gerbil, Chez, Gambit), and Haskell (which
| for some weird reason I think of as a Lisp language).
|
| Sadly, I have none of my old Medley Interlisp code that I did in
| the early 1980s (I searched my old paperwork looking for program
| listings - no luck). I thought of writing up a short 50 page
| "tutorial and fun projects" book on Medley Interlisp, but the
| idea of starting over from scratch is daunting.
| mikelevins wrote:
| I was in Weird Stuff Warehouse in Santa Clara in about 1990 and
| they had three fully kitted-out 1108s sitting on the floor for
| about $600 each, with software and manuals and so forth. I went
| home to deal with something or other, intending to come back
| and get one, but by the time I returned they were gone. They
| never had one again when I was there.
| pamoroso wrote:
| I wrote the linked post, I'm glad it brought up some good
| memories. I'd definitely buy your book.
| dang wrote:
| Old product homepages:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000523141258/http://www.top2bo...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000115225954/http://top2bottom...
| gumby wrote:
| Many people who read about Lisp Machines are not aware that the
| InterLisp-D world and the MIT world (CADR, LMI, Symbolics etc)
| had significantly different approaches to how the systems should
| work, so even if you have read or used the MIT-style systems you
| will learn a lot by using Medley. I came from MIT out to PARC for
| a year, and later moved CYC from D machines to Symbolics machines
| (a complete reimplementation using a different fundamental
| architecture) so have good experiences with them both.
|
| At heart, the InterLisp _language_ itself isn 't that different
| from MIT lisps, as Interlisp started down the road at BBN and
| there was a lot of cross fertilization in both directions. And
| CommonLisp, while heavily based on the "MIT" model has a lot of
| Interlisp influence in it.
|
| But as far as the interfaces are concerned things are quite
| different. Writing code on an "MIT-style" machine was like
| writing it on the '10: type into an emacs and away you go.
| Interlisp-D's conception was heavily influenced by the SmallTalk
| experience: structured rather than text editing, mouse as a
| primary interface tool, and development based on images rather
| than files of code. It was much more intensely networked even
| than most computing today. Although I ultimately still preferred
| the MIT model, I learned a lot from Interlisp and there are many
| things I preferred in that environment. The most annoying part
| for me was the dependence on the mouse.
|
| A nit:
|
| > "The learning curve of such a complex system is steep, almost
| vertical."
|
| This means you could effectively learn everything overnight. A
| shallow learning curve is the terrible one: takes a long time to
| learn.
| pamoroso wrote:
| I'm the author of the linked post, thanks for sharing your
| experience. I'm curious what you preferred of the Interlisp
| environment over the MIT world.
| pjmlp wrote:
| And Mesa, Mesa/Cedar were heavily influenced by Smalltalk and
| Interlisp, there are a few references that they wanted to
| duplicate the development experience of those dynamic
| environments into strong typing environments.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Could you elaborate on the 'much more intensely networked' bit
| please.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > images rather than files of code
|
| This is my pet peeve about Smalltalk and I love Smalltalk.
| Image basically means a single huge file. It's fine if the IDE
| lets you navigate inside it when you are working alone. But
| with multiple authors the issue becomes how do you merge two or
| more huge files.
|
| Within a file all parts of it must work together. If you have a
| huge file the number of pairs or parts which must work together
| is exponentially larger. So merging "images" together is a
| problem on a class of its own.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| There were source code management systems, like ENVY, which
| made this easy. More than easy, IBM Smalltalk with ENVY was
| the best system I've ever used for collaborating with other
| programmers.
| lispm wrote:
| I didn't use Interlisp-D systems back in the days. I was as a
| student only a short time (mid 80s) in a lab which had probably
| a dozen or more of them, incl. server and laser printer. They
| were already no longer being used. The lab at that time was for
| a research project for a natural language dialog system - think
| Siri without spoken language - the research prototype was about
| hotel room reservation dialogs.
|
| I'd think the main problem was the underpowered hardware -
| especially the small address space (both for main and virtual
| memory) - which was too small for the more challenging Lisp
| programs and their data. Users moved to Symbolics and also very
| quick to UNIX based Lisps on SUNs.
|
| > It was much more intensely networked even than most computing
| today.
|
| I'd like to hear more about that... what was it like?
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| In common parlance, a learning curve is plotting effort/output,
| not output/effort. So vertical means nigh infinite effort to
| achieve small change in output.
|
| I also don't like this convention, since it flips dependent-
| independent variable dichotomy on its head, but it seems to be
| the widely accepted norm now.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Imagine someone let you into an alien spaceship they landed in
| your backyard, sat you at the controls, and encouraged you to fly
| the ship. This is the opportunity Medley Interlisp offers._
|
| This is rare and great.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _2022 Medley Interlisp Annual Report_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34100600 - Dec 2022 (11
| comments)
|
| _Interlisp Online_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621183 - Aug 2022 (9
| comments)
|
| _Larry Masinter, the Medley Interlisp Project: Status and Plans_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25379238 - Dec 2020 (2
| comments)
|
| _Interlisp project: Restore Interlisp-D to usability on modern
| OSes_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24075216 - Aug 2020
| (24 comments)
|
| _The Interlisp Programming Environment (1981) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966328 - June 2013 (10
| comments)
|
| _The Interlisp Programming Environment -- nice paper for those
| building tools_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889468 -
| Nov 2010 (1 comment)
| la4ry wrote:
| small correction: Medley online.interisp.org doesn't run IN the
| browser -- it's running on a Linux-based Docker container with
| AWS. You can also install it on your linux, macos, windows (with
| WSL or ...) and other computer/os interfaces.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Warren Teitelman wrote about the history of Interlisp-D and other
| window systems in 1985, in the chapter "Ten Years of Window
| Systems - A Retrospective View" of the book "Methodology of
| Window Management" (the volume is a record of the Workshop on
| Window Management held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's
| Cosener's House between 29 April and 1 May 1985).
|
| Warren was the manager of Sun's Multimedia Group in which I
| worked on NeWS, and his contributions to programming environments
| and user interface design at Xerox PARC were important and
| underrated.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Teitelman
|
| >Warren Teitelman (1941 - August 12, 2013) was an American
| computer scientist known for his work on programming environments
| and the invention and first implementation of concepts including
| Undo / Redo,[5] spelling correction, advising, online help, and
| DWIM (Do What I Mean).
|
| Ten Years of Window Systems - A Retrospective View, by Warren
| Teitelman:
|
| http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/...
|
| >4.1 INTRODUCTION
|
| >Both James Gosling and I currently work for SUN and the reason
| for my wanting to talk before he does is that I am talking about
| the past and James is talking about the future. I have been
| connected with eight window systems as a user, or as an
| implementer, or by being in the same building! I have been asked
| to give a historical view and my talk looks at window systems
| over ten years and features: the Smalltalk, DLisp (Interlisp),
| Interlisp-D, Tajo (Mesa Development Environment), Docs (Cedar),
| Viewers (Cedar), SunWindows and SunDew systems.
|
| >The talk focuses on key ideas, where they came from, how they
| are connected and how they evolved. Firstly, I make the
| disclaimer that these are my personal recollections and there are
| bound to be some mistakes although I did spend some time talking
| to people on the telephone about when things did happen.
|
| >The first system of interest is Smalltalk from Xerox PARC.
|
| Alan Kay commented in email on that paper and Warren's under-
| appreciated work:
|
| >Windows didn't start with Smalltalk. The first _real_ windowing
| system I know of was ca 1962, in Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (as
| with so many other firsts). The logical "paper" was about 1 /3
| mile on a side and the system clipped, zoomed, and panned in real
| time. Almost the same year -- and using much of the same code --
| "Sketchpad III" had 4 windows showing front, side, top, and 3D
| view of the object being made. These two systems set up the way
| of thinking about windows in the ARPA research community. One of
| the big goals from the start was to include the ability to do
| multiple views of the same objects, and to edit them from any
| view, etc.
|
| >When Ivan went ca 1967 to Harvard to start on the first VR
| system, he and Bob Sproull wrote a paper about the general uses
| of windows for most things, including 3D. This paper included
| Danny Cohen's "mid-point algorithm" for fast clipping of vectors.
| The scheme in the paper had much of what later was called
| "Models-Views-and-Controllers" in my group at Parc. A view in the
| Sutherland-Sproull scheme had two ends (like a telescope). One
| end looked at the virtual world, and the other end was mapped to
| the screen. It is fun to note that the rectangle on the screen
| was called a "viewport" and the other end in the virtual world
| was called "the window". (This got changed at Parc, via some
| confusions demoing to Xerox execs).
|
| >In 1967, Ed Cheadle and I were doing "The Flex Machine", a
| desktop personal computer that also had multiple windows (and
| Cheadle independently developed the mid-point algorithm for this)
| -- our viewing scheme was a bit simpler.
|
| >The first few paragraphs of Teitelman's "history" are quite
| wrong (however, he was a good guy, and never got the recognition
| he deserved for the PILOT system he did at MIT with many of these
| ideas winding up in Interlisp).
|
| David Rosenthal (who worked on Andrew, NeWS, X10, X11, and ICCCM)
| replied:
|
| Alan, thank you for these important details. I'd like to write a
| blog post correcting my view of this history -- may I quote your
| e-mail?
|
| Is this paper, "A Clipping Divider":
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1476589.1476687
|
| The one you refer to?
|
| David.
|
| Alan Kay replied:
|
| Hi David
|
| Thanks very much! Your blog is a real addition to the history and
| context needed to really understand and criticize and improve
| today.
|
| I would like to encourage you to expand it a bit more (even
| though you do give quite a few references).
|
| I had very high hopes for Sun. After Parc, I wanted something
| better than Smalltalk, and thought Sun had a good chance to do
| the "next great thing" in all of these directions. And I think a
| number of real advances were made despite the "low-pass filters"
| and exigencies of business.
|
| So please do write some more.
|
| Cheers and best wishes to all
|
| Alan
|
| Don Hopkins replied:
|
| Yeah, it was very sad that Sun ended up in Larry Ellison's grubby
| hands. And I sure liked the Sun logo designed by Vaughan Pratt
| and tilted 45 degrees by John Gage (almost as great as Scott
| Kim's design of the SGI logo), which he just sent out to the
| garbage dump. (At least Facebook kept the Sun logo on the back of
| their sign as a warning to their developers.)
|
| I truly believe that in some other alternate dimension, there is
| a Flying Logo Heaven where the souls of dead flying logos go,
| where they dramatically promenade and swoop and spin around each
| other in pomp and pageantry to bombastic theme music, reliving
| their glory days on the trade show floors and promotional videos.
|
| It would make a great screen saver, at least!
|
| -Don
|
| David Rosenthal posted on his blog:
|
| History of Window Systems
|
| https://blog.dshr.org/2021/03/history-of-window-systems.html
|
| >Alan Kay's Should web browsers have stuck to being document
| viewers? makes important points about the architecture of the
| infrastructure for user interfaces, but also sparked comments and
| an email exchange that clarified the early history of window
| systems. This is something I've wrtten about previously, so below
| the fold I go into considerable detail.
|
| I archived a discussion that started with Alan's reply to the
| question "Should web browsers have stuck to being document
| viewers?":
|
| Alan Kay on "Should web browsers have stuck to being document
| viewers?" and a discussion of Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/alan-kay-on-should-web-browser...
|
| >Alan Kay answered: "Actually quite the opposite, if "document"
| means an imitation of old static text media (and later including
| pictures, and audio and video recordings)."
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Don, is it fair to Teitelman to say that after years of trying
| to get machines to DWIM, he finally enjoyed success with his
| dogs?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| WIMP is like DWIM without Doo, but with Pee.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM
|
| >Critics of DWIM claimed that it was "tuned to the particular
| typing mistakes to which Teitelman was prone, and no others"
| and called it "Do What Teitelman Means" or "Do What Interlisp
| Means", or even claimed DWIM stood for "Damn Warren's
| Infernal Machine."
|
| [==>]
|
| >Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
| spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his
| style, and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if
| they were stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus
| claimed that the acronym stood for 'Damn Warren's Infernal
| Machine!'.
|
| >In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to
| the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another
| hacker there typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The
| editor there named backup files by appending $ to the
| original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup
| files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that
| there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully
| reported *$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'. It then
| started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker
| managed to stop it with a Vulcan nerve pinch after only a
| half dozen or so files were lost.
|
| >The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted
| to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in
| front of his workstation, and then type delete *$ twice.
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