May 27, 2003
More Lisp Machine Video

If you see just one lisp machine movie this year, it should be this one (6.5 MB Quicktime MPEG4, 15 MB Quicktime non-MPEG4 which may be easier to play in linux). mirror 1: MPEG4, non-MPEG4; mirror 2: MPEG4, non-MPEG4; mirror3: MPEG4, non-MPEG4; thanks Xach, Dan Barlow and Andreas Fuchs!

Rainer Joswig has made another video (you can see his earlier video here) demonstrating what it's like to use a lisp machine. I think this one gives you a better sense of what it's like in day-to-day use, and why it was such a productive environment that people are still obsessed with these machines decades later.

[lisp machine screenshot]

Posted by jjwiseman at May 27, 2003 04:00 PM
Comments

Hmm yes, that's much better. I think I'd pay money for such things, using the street performer's protocol. In fact, one day it would be cool if someone would critique the lisp machine, since these things never seem real until you hear about their faults.

I find watching others programming vaguely peaceful. Whenever I pair with someone new I often gain a new view on things.

Posted by: on May 27, 2003 07:29 PM

i think posting a video to demonstrate a new tool is really great, since you just can't get the feel for some things by reading the documentation or without spending a long time to learn it all on your own.

Posted by: anon on May 28, 2003 12:00 PM

Oops, forget that time lapse comment. I kinda missed the whole audio narration on my first viewing. Now that's a whole lot better!

Posted by: Vladimir S. on June 1, 2003 10:40 PM

Hmm, probably I was just talking much...

Posted by: Rainer Joswig on June 2, 2003 10:01 AM

"Hmm, probably I was just talking much..."

Or my speakers were unplugged. The narration really explained a lot - the part that impressed me most was when zmacs prompted for a class, and the only thing the mouse highlighted was the class definition. If you make another video, more goodies like this would be nice. I actually have a request for something along these lines - I've heard that the locations of function definitions were stored on the system, and one command could open up zmacs and jump to the correct place in a file containing the specified function - something like that would be really sweet to see in action.

Posted by: Vladimir S. on June 2, 2003 08:53 PM

Rainer:
in http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~moeller/symbolics-info/leonardo/leonardo.html
i saw at the bottom "thanks to Rainer Joswig". Do you have Leonardo on your Lisp machine? can you show it?
:) Note, 100x thanks for the videos.

Posted by: Nahuel on June 13, 2003 06:19 PM

I got bored about 3/4 of the way thru. The machine is slow, point and click is slower than typing, where is the enhanced productivity??

Perhaps it finally concluded with the creation of a useful application, but otherwise having a neat tool is useless. Tools are needed for creation, spending all your time playing with a neat tool "noting how helpful it is -- and if I did this instead - or ... " only increases entrophy.

It's like having a Ferrari ... up on blocks. The wheels sure look pretty going around in circles.

Posted by: The Other Side on November 22, 2004 06:42 PM

The capturing process is what slowed it down.

The demo was not about creating an application. It was thought to demo the use interface. That's all.

This one (http://lispm.dyndns.org/mov/lispm-4.mov) is done with a newer version of the capturing software and shows almost the real speed.

Posted by: Rainer Joswig on November 23, 2004 01:30 AM

The created link above includes the closing parenthesis.

http://lispm.dyndns.org/mov/lispm-4.mov

Posted by: Rainer Joswig on November 23, 2004 01:49 AM
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