@amoroso@fosstodon.org
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amoroso

@amoroso@fosstodon.org

Astronomy, space, Android, retrocomputing, Lisp, coding.

No stock photos, SEO, marketing, clickbait, ads, or calls to action. I Just enjoy sharing my geeky interests.

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amoroso, to Lisp
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

The Medley Interlisp site now has a donation page for supporting the project via a number of donation platforms and options:

https://interlisp.org/donate

molly0xfff, to ai
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

back in my day we called this spyware

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@molly0xfff Can't be the same Microsoft who blasted Google for scanning Gmail mails for targeting ads, right?

amoroso, to retrocomputing
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

Matthias Wiesmann reflects on how much computing used to be diverse over four decades ago. As an example he explains how weird the Commodore 64 was compared with modern systems.

https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/37378

thelinuxcast, to random
@thelinuxcast@fosstodon.org avatar

My ISP has an addon where you can pay them not to raise your internet price.

This is what we've come to.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@thelinuxcast Over the past several months I called twice the support of my phone carrier and ISP, Vodafone IT, for information about some services and plans. On both occasions the support agent saw I have been a longtime customer and, without me requesting anything, lowered my fiber Internet monthly subscription fee.

amoroso, to Lisp
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

The Medley site has an experimental mirror of the source tree https://interlisp.org/src (may change) where Interlisp sources and TEdit files are available as PDFs, with the former prettyprinted and syntax highlighted.

A nice feature is bitmaps in Interlisp files are rendered as actual bitmaps like in this snippet of an address book program:

https://interlisp.org/src/lispusers/ADDRESSBOOK.pdf

AddressBookBM is a bitmap, AddressBookMask a mask for the transparent background of AddressBookBM.

thelastpsion, to retrocomputing
@thelastpsion@bitbang.social avatar

It's been a great weekend at the Festival for Portable Computing. Thank you so much to everyone who came along.

I also gained a Revo (dead, of course) and became the custodian of a Geofox!

#Psion #retrocomputing

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@thelastpsion If you have fun you're doing it right regardless of how interesting or useful what you do is. Even just your passion alone is inspiring. Nothing you post is boring, no matter what you accomplish or share.

Take care.

amoroso, to VintageOSes
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

A young developer who never used Windows 98 back in the day stumbled upon an introductory book on the operating system and posted his impressions on skimming it, which brought him joy. He wrote:

"I was also left with the impression that perhaps I would like more software to come with a physical manual."

https://jamesg.blog/2024/05/19/windows-98-manual

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@lopta Absolutely.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@lachlan I loved printed manuals too.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@jake4480 I hope you'll get it too.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@jake4480 Maybe not that common as AbeBooks doesn't carry much.

amoroso, to retrocomputing
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

In this interview Charles Simonyi told the origin of the acronym WYSIWYG in the context of his work at Xerox PARC on the Bravo word processor, see page 21:

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2015/06/102702232-05-01-acc.pdf#page=21

Xerox Star ads such as this might have been inspired by the anecdote Simonyi told:

https://interface-experience.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/IE-Star-2.jpg

From here:

https://interface-experience.org/objects/xerox-star-8010-information-system/

By the way, it's an interesting 2008 interview Grady Booch did with Simonyi for a Computer History Museum oral history project.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@thollief You're welcome.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@mattof The video is cool and reminds how much paper we handled back then.

screwtape, to gamedev
@screwtape@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

Post nobody wants #itch #gamedev #meta analysis from latest / popular devlog posts.
https://lispy-gopher-show.itch.io/logos-lisp-legend/devlog/733862/post-nobody-wants-itchio-meta-at-my-glance
tl;dr #springlispgamejam2024 people are already doing well by breaking out of the sameyness with #lisp power tools and cultural memory. On the other hand, it must be hard to break into the crowds of The Exact Same People Doing The Exact Same Thing With The Exact Same Engine Demo Examples. Maybe just don't worry about it. I kinda regret writing this.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@screwtape A major motivation for joining such a project is often learning and having fun rather than making something original. Since time is limited this may explain much of the similarity as people start from popular and widely available frameworks and tools.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@screwtape I wonder what languages and frameworks would participants pick if the contest schedule was less tight.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@screwtape Lisp has an old tradition in gaming too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@screwtape Back in the day Naughty Dog was widely shared as a Lisp success story.

amoroso, to random
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

Rate my Lisp Machine setup and share yours.

Medley Online session on an Intel i7 1.8 GHz ASUS Chromebox 3 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage.

#interlisp #LispMachine #ChromeOS

A wooden desk with a black keyboard, a black mouse, and a flat LCD monitor with a black webcam on top, The screen shows the black and white desktop of a 1980s graphical workstation environment. The desktop has a gray background pattern and some windows with a white background and a title bar with white text on a black background. At the left of the desk can be partly seen a wooden bookcase with two shelves. On the bottom shelf are a black computer with a mini PC form factor and a white and gray smart speaker.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@rogersm The noVNC VNC web client you see on the screen connects to a Medley session running in the cloud, which uses as much memory as the Maiko Virtual Machine can (up to 256 MB).

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@rogersm I can run it locally too but it still can't use more than that amount of memory.

amoroso, to Lisp
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

I didn't know much about John Allen, the author of the classic 1978 book Anatomy of LISP. This post by a researcher who knew him well tells a bit about Allen, his work, and his passion for Lisp and computing.

https://mcjones.org/dustydecks/archives/2024/04/11/1249/

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@halla Glad you like it.

amoroso, to Lisp
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

I didn't realize ACM makes available the full-ish archive of the LISP Pointers journal SIGPLAN published from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. It contains most of the papers of most of the issues, an historical treasure of practical value.

https://dl.acm.org/loi/sigplan-lisppointers

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@weekend_editor No thanks, they're available now.

bitzero, to Lisp
@bitzero@corteximplant.net avatar

There's now a long thread about what would make Lisp more successful. Nice idea, but it quickly turned into a good example of why this will never happen and why Lisp rarely fascinates new developers. I do not know if the term "lisplaining" exists already, but the thred is mosly lisplaining now.

amoroso,
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar

@bitzero Okay thanks.

Aside from the attitude I'm not sure what the practical alternatives are. If it's better to adapt Lisp to what a wider audience expects or is comfortable with, this is basically what already happened over the past three decades. I mean the new languages that incorporated many Lisp features and can be, and effectively are, used by a wider audience.

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