@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 retrocomputing
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My weekend reading is the story of Don Estridge, the manager who led the development of the IBM 5150 computer better known as the PC:

https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-misfit-who-built-the-ibm-pc

amoroso,
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๐Ÿ‘† I read the story of Don Estridge, the manager who led the development of the IBM PC. His decency is moving and long gone in the tech industry.

That story is worth reading not just for how Estridge pushed the boundaries of the computer industry, but also how he pushed the boundaries of humanity in business. Which these days is an oxymoron.

amoroso, to Lisp
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This is the year of the Lisp Machine desktop.

Here's an online Medley Interlisp session on my Chromebox. Your turn: show off your Lisp Machine environment.

amoroso,
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@sgharms This glyph? :debian:

@RL_Dane

amoroso,
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@sgharms This is the Lisp glyph: :lisp:

@RL_Dane

amoroso,
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@sgharms That's basically it. In Lisp you interactively grow a program instead of writing it.

@RL_Dane @amin

amoroso,
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@RL_Dane With the proper Lisp aware editor parentheses "disappear" in a matter of hours.

You instinctively and correctly match parentheses and no longer pay conscious attention to them. Other grouping symbols may actually look distracting.

To understand code you mostly look at indentation and familiarity with basic Lisp idioms does the rest.

@sgharms @amin

amoroso,
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@sgharms Have you tried Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel?

https://gigamonkeys.com/book

Most current or past Lisp books focus on the language and few discuss the interactive development style.

@RL_Dane @amin

amoroso,
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@RL_Dane Pretty much. Most of the times you have no idea what the program will look like when you start coding, and often the problem is not well defined either.

In Lisp you embrace these unknowns and let exploratory programming guide you to a solution by growing the code. This way you learn about the problem and design the program as you go.

@sgharms @amin

amoroso,
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@sgharms I haven't seen any such binding hihlighting in the Interlisp environment.

@phf @RL_Dane @amin

amoroso,
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@RL_Dane Read, Eval, Print, Learn.

@sgharms @amin

amoroso,
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@lispm It's possible to change the background to a pixel pattern, like the one in the screenshot, but not solid gray as Medley currently supports only black and white pixels.

amoroso, to retrocomputing
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Some old but fascinating notes on the history of window systems by David Rosenthal, who worked on X-Windows and NeWS.

The post starts by commenting some remarks by Alan Kay on browser architecture and goes from there, discussing the work of other pioneers and their own comments. It covers display PostScript and other interesting system design ideas.

https://blog.dshr.org/2021/03/history-of-window-systems.html

#retrocomputing #WindowSystem #gui

amoroso, to Lisp
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A way of programmatically taking a screenshot on Medley is to pass a window to the Interlisp function BITMAPCOPY. As in this example in which I captured the logo window the pointer was in (returned by WHICHW) and opened it in the bitmap editor (EDITBM):

(EDITBM (BITMAPCOPY (WHICHW)))

amoroso, to RSS
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A benefit of RSS is it allows to read and keep track of large volumes of articles, reading material, and media. Metod Rybar briefly points this out and outlines his workflow with the @Inoreader newsreader which I use too.

https://www.rybar.me/2024/06/04/rss-is-the-king-how-to-read-that-much/

elb, to Lisp
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I just updated my Medley from the Medley Interlisp Revival project (https://interlisp.org/) to get improved CLtL2 compatibility ... and boom, CL (loop)! Now to work through some CL code I've written to see if I can get it into the environment and running.

amoroso,
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@elb Are you loading the symbolic file or the compiled file? Does your code have any functions or symbols named F?

amoroso,
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@elb Never mind, โ†‘F is likely a control code for code formatting.

amoroso,
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@elb Try just (LOGOUT). Does it help?

amoroso,
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@elb That's interesting thanks, I'll discuss this with the team.

amoroso,
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@elb By the way, have you built Medley from source or installed a downloaded distribution?

amoroso,
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@elb In my early experiments with Common Lisp on Medley I tripped into reader issues when not evaluating XCL:DEFINE-FILE-ENVIRONMENT from an Interlisp Exec.

amoroso,
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@elb Back to your original example, it's worth changing the readtable from LISP to XCL as the latter is designed to support Interlisp's symbols.

https://fosstodon.org/@elb@social.sdf.org/112553603107006966

amoroso,
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@elb You're welcome, glad it's resolved.

Page 24 of this PDF provides some details on Medley's standard packages:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/interlisp-d/198706_Lyric/3102464_Lyric_Common_Lisp_Implementation_Notes_Jun87.pdf

amoroso, to random
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I wonder how difficult would it be for newcomers to grok Lisp parentheses if they weren't implicitly supposed to find parentheses hard due to all the fuss and cliches around them.

As a complete Lisp newbie over three decades ago, to me parentheses "disappeared" within minutes of using my first Lisp environment, TI PC-Scheme, and have never been an issue since then.

amoroso,
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@dziban That's an interesting experience.

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