Talk:Lisp machine

message: I'm not a good enough editor to fix this with the right referencing. But the article currently states that the Nubus was developed at MIT for use with lisp machines. But that is not correct. The NuBus was developed as part of a machine that ran Unix on a 68000 processor.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuMachine
TI later manufactured these in a big cabinet, and the LMI Lambda was a processor board set that fit into a NuMachine.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.46.227.226 (talk) 23:35, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nubus and TI 

message: I added a link to ICAD (a Knowledge Based Engineering system) as an example of a system that started in Lisp (on the Lisp Machine) and then ported to Unix as Common Lisp evolved. 
Personally, I have worked with 9 variety of Lisp Machines in a commercial context (Symbolics (3 variety), LMI (2 variety), TI (3 variety), Xerox). It would be good to see other examples collected. 
Related topics to be added: -- Moby (spelling?) memory - LMI's (?) work on distributed Lisp, -- tools such as KEE, Knowledgecraft, ..., -- applications - KBE on Unix accounted for buckets of dollars (cost savings) in very large system design and manufacture (aircraft), -- other approaches, such as IBM's implementation of KEE on the mainframe, ...
:I've taken the liberty of doing a little formatting on the ICAD article. --Maru  (talk) Contribs 23:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I may have clobbered those changes. Sorry, I need to be more careful. (Turns out that I wasn't logged in.)
Added GBB as another example. Let's get these application engines recorded and recognized!!! jmswtlk 13:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lisp 

message: Over the years I have heard many people talk about the power of the Lisp machine while rueing its departure from the scene. The Lisp that ensued on Unix took many years to get back a lot of the functionality. 
In a sense, development was crippled. 
This is an analog, IMHO, of a larger problem of 'green field' versus 'legacy' that, perhaps, ought to be discussed elsewhere; however, the Lisp machine experience offers a wonderful and concrete example. So, let's hear stories about pre and post. Those who liked the Lisp Machines liked Lisp. What became of those who had the 'bounty' of this experience (or better, could understand the significance)?
A recent example is ICAD which is in hiatus. Given comments posted on this page, there is something missing in the proposed replacement systems. Has anyone characterized what might be the missing pieces and why Lisp might still be useful? It's interesting that GBBOpen is Lisp-based. jmswtlk 13:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Lisp Machines brought (or wrought) 

message: This is a great article! WP:FA, anyone? :)  But while copyediting, I ran across the sentence
:Often it was affectionately referred to as the "Knight machine", perhaps since Knight wrote his master's thesis on it); it was extremely well-received.
Two problems: First, WP:RS; if we're going to claim that the machine was affectionately referred to as such-and-such, we'd better have at least a primary source for that (e.g., a Wikipedia editor who claims to be an old-school Lisp hacker), or better a secondary source (e.g., a dead-tree history of Lisp). Second, an ambiguity: Did Knight write his thesis on the computer, perhaps using Emacs? Or did he write it on the computer, perhaps focusing on its history and development? Assuming the latter, I changed the underlined bit to "on the subject"; but if that's not right, please make the appropriate substitution. --Quuxplusone 05:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ambiguity

message: Laser Printing was developed first on Lisp Machines at Xerox? Windowing Systems? Computer Mice? Bitmapped Graphics?
I think they were available early, but they were not developed first on Lisp Machines. The things that Xerox developed (also not the first) were often done for their office system or for the Smalltalk systems. Those were often using similar hardware, but were not developed in Lisp.
I see two alternatives:
a) replace 'developed first' with something like 'developed early'.
b) coming up with references that backup those claims. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.176.6.193 (talk) 22:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Alto was the first known system to use a bitmapped GUI, the mouse was introduced for the NLS... therefore, I cannot help that unless specific examples are provides, the 'first' statement is simply in error, so I have removed it. JamesFox 02:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Firsts? 

message: Could it be that the Lisp machines from the 1980s is because of some critiques on von Neumann architectures (and "von Neumann programming languages")?  See, for instance, [theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/other/backus.pdf Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?], John Backus, Communications of the ACM, Volume 21, Number 8, August 1978.
Is there someone, more knowledgable than me, that could make the link in this article with Backus and others, and the von Neumann architecture or languages, or refute this link I'm seeing altogether? Hulten (talk) 11:57, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to von Neumann architecture? 

message: I have been doing some reading recently regarding the Xerox Dorado, Dolphin, and Dandelion and it appears to me that they are sort of a unique case. They are not all the same architecture. It is not clear to me whether the Dolphin has the same processor as the Dorado but with different software, but the Dandelion clearly does not have the same processor as the Dorado. All of them are clearly descended from the Xerox Alto, having user-programmable microcode; the Dorado and Dolphin at the least appear to be partially backwards compatible with it. To me Lisp machine implies that these machines were principally designed to run Lisp, which does not appear to be the case. Lisp was but one set of microcode that could be run on the machine, and appears to not be the primary concern of the manuals, which appear to have been written with the assumption that Mesa would be the primary operating environment and spend about as much time talking about Smalltalk as Lisp. --Blah2 (talk) 16:35, 25 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Xerox machines