SymbolicsTalk28June2012

If you are into Lisp Machines, this talk on Symbolics by Kalman Reti (who worked there) is worth watching (1h): [VIDEO] If you only have 15 minutes, he gives another demo here: [LINK] He has another video where he does some actual hacking (smooth scrolling of sheet music for display while playing an instrument): [LINK]

Common Lisp invented the REPL, Clojure only provides a subset of it. Have a look at, "The Interlisp Programming Environment", [LINK] Or online demos like [VIDEO] for Symbolics. Ultimately you can try the community versions of Allegro and LispWorks. [LINK] [LINK]

>In addition: two months to a compiler? Four to a complete chip? All from a team under 15 ppl? "Because of [Symbolics' automated design] methodology, we were able to do five different revs of the chip on four different technologies, which was pretty amazing [for the time]. ... We took about 10 to 12 man-years to do the Ivory chip, and the only comparable chip contemporaneous to that was the MicroVAX at DEC; I knew some people who worked on that, and their estimate was that it was 70 to 80 man-years to do the MicroVAX. That in a nutshell is the reason that the Symbolics lisp machine was great." -Kalman Reti (2012) [VIDEO] Non-blub work environments bring sone fantasy-tier goals down to just within possibility by a motivated team of geniuses, which Symbolics had. Reminds me a little of how Alan Kay describes the forgotten art of Starrett erecting the empire state building in under a year: "Gentlemen, this building of yours is going to present unusual problems. Ordinary equipment won't be worth a damn on it. We'll buy and make new stuff, fitted for the job. That's what we do on every big job; it costs less than renting secondhand stuff, and it's more efficient." [LINK]