Heads up: @bitsavers uploaded a new batch of Symbolics Lisp Machine manuals and documents covering the Lisp language, development tools, system essentials, and more.
In 1984, 40 years ago, Digital Press published the book "Common LISP: Reference Manual" by Guy L. Steele Jr. and others, more widely known as the first edition of "Common Lisp: The Language" or CLtL1. It was an early major milestone of a Lisp standardization process completed a decade later.
@amoroso#commonlisp#lisp#cltl#cltl1#lispm#symbolics In Symbolics Genera we can switch the language in the REPL/Listener to CLtL. It then also advertizes only this in the features. We can then create a rough overview of the available symbols.
#pascal#modula2#oberon#lilith Niklaus Wirth passed away on 1st Jan 2024? I learned a lot by reading his books and by using Pascal & Modula 2 on the UCSD virtual machine on the Apple ][.
#lisp#lispmachine#symbolics#genera#pascal#niklauswirth Niklaus Wirth's PASCAL made it to unusual systems: Here is a screenshot of a Lisp Machine, browsing the original Pascal User Manual and Report, but in a hypertext browser, with a PASCAL implementation loaded...
I always wondered what other books Symbolics Press published besides the well known "Object-Oriented Programming in COMMON LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS" by Sonya Keene.
It turns out Addison-Wesley may have carried out most of the publishing work and Keene's book was likely the only outcome of the collaboration.
I love how Dan Weinreb's reasons for why #Symbolics didn't succeed doesn't even consider their hostility towards free and open development of #LispMachine software as having something to do with it.
could it be that the #Symbolics dream was little more than the infantile wish that compels the subject to undermine their personal wish-fulfillment, ie the Freudian death drive?
in other words, shouldn't the dream be to see #LispMachines succeed, rather than one particular (corporate, commercial) realization of it?
The ultimate yak shave: to implement its last generation of #LispMachines, Symbolics developed a complete #EDA toolset in #CommonLisp called NS that enabled them to design and verify their ASICs, gate arrays, and boards from architecture to photomasks for manufacturing.