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Symbolics Lisp Machine demo Jan 2013

Kalman Reti · demo · Watch on YouTube

History of computingFunctional programmingGUI, HCI & interface history

What it is

Symbolics developer Kalman Reti gives a short introductory demo of a Symbolics Lisp Machine running Genera in an emulator. It shows the context-aware command line, typed on-screen objects, and the live-editable system, including swapping in a C-compiled JPEG decoder.

Why Hacker News recommends it

The go-to demo whenever HN discusses what Lisp machines were like and what modern shells and editors lack.

  • 5 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2014, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “It makes working on VSCode today look like banging rocks together”

    Shows interactive systems far ahead of modern editors.

    hcarvalhoalves, 2024-10 · Strong recommendation · in “The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)”

  2. “That shows off a LISP machine roughly as it was written in the 80s/90s.”

    Fun demo of a Lisp machine as it was in the 80s/90s.

    zaarn, 2019-06 · Recommendation · in “Mezzano – An operating system written in Common Lisp”

  3. “showing some of what it's like to work with a Symbolics Lisp Machine.”

    Expert demonstrating working with a Symbolics Lisp Machine.

    mikelevins, 2020-05 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Production Lisp in 2020?”

  4. “If you only have 15 minutes, he gives another demo here”

    Short 15-minute demo by a Symbolics developer.

    rml, 2021-04 · Recommendation · in “What have we lost? [video]”

  5. “Check out demos of the old Lisp Machines, [1] is a brief overview demo”

    Brief overview of old Lisp Machine runtime visualization.

    yourapostasy, 2023-10 · Recommendation · in “Making Hard Things Easy”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: symbolics, genera, lisp, repl, operating systems, user interfaces

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