The PERQ factor (was: One-upsmanship) (fwd)

From: Peter C. Wallace <pcw_at_mesanet.com>
Date: Sun Apr 21 12:25:46 2002

On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Derek Peschel wrote:

> I sent you a personal mesasge and then you replied to the list... either
> your mail server is "smart" (fills in To: automatically) or you did some
> extra typing. *grumble* *mutter* So we might as well bring the discussion
> back to the list (i.e., yes, I realize I'm replying to the list this time).
>
> On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 07:52:02AM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote:
>
> > > The design of both the software and the hardware strikes me as baroque
> > > (typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a
>
> > I dont think that there was a whole lot there that was not needed. A
> > tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of
> > executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build
> > in 1985...
>
> I'm not convinced. I'm not saying it was trivial, I'm saying it seems
> to have evolved more than being designed from the ground up. Come on,
> look at the keyboard. And the software is still baroque. Powerful,
> but baroque.

Of course it evolved, what commercial computer systems vintage 1985 did not
evolve from earlier systems? The proportion of new ideas embodied in the
36xx is probably as high or higher than many other systems of the time.

Baroque compared to what? Other Lisp environments? Other operating systems?


>
> > You can download a Interlisp/common lisp environment from PARC that will run
> > under Linux (its actually an application (LFG)) but you can play with SEdit
> > and Tedit) ...
>
> Do you have a URL?

http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/nltt/medley/

>
> -- Derek
>


Peter Wallace
Received on Sun Apr 21 2002 - 12:25:46 BST

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