alt.hn

6/22/2026 at 3:24:40 PM

Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

 https://www.patrickdomanico.com/bpm/2026/06/16/inventing-the-future-one-lisp-machine-at-a-time/

by pamoroso

6/22/2026 at 4:27:29 PM

If you find PARC interesting, and especially if you're interested in symbolic computation, I can highly recommend digging as deep as you can possibly stomach into the FGCS:

https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html

As a public research initiative, pretty much everything was published when the initiative was completed. PIMs are absolute engineering marvels. The ICOT had command of an army of the absolute best talent in the entire country, and unified them towards a goal of pure exploratory research with no market pressure, with all the excesses of 1980s Japan.

by ux266478

6/24/2026 at 4:23:00 AM

FGCS: the Fifth-Generation Computing System

I was really excited about this initiative at the time, just starting my computer science undergrad degree.

Hardware that ran Prolog as close to bare metal as possible.

Thanks for the reminder. 40 years ago.

by watersb

6/24/2026 at 1:38:35 AM

A great tech book on symbolic computers in general and Lisp machines, is Peter Kogge's 1991, "The Architecture of Symbolic Computers". I believe new efforts by people like Yann LeCun will counter the "LLMs or bust" monoculture along with SOC/ASICs, in-memory compute, neuromorphic chips, dataflow, optical/analog hybrids , etc. that will bring a healthy correction or alternatives to the Von Neumann architecture.

by eggy

6/24/2026 at 12:12:49 PM

I wasn’t familiar with the term “Residential programming,” but it reminds me of the talk “Stop Writing Dead Programs” (https://jackrusher.com/strange-loop-2022/)

Increasingly, I think that an agent (and I) would work much better in a malleable, notebook-like, inspectable program, than it would with its current file-based “edit and re-run” primitives.

“Marimo pair” (built into their notebook-like primitive) is an attempt at this. And they have program introspection tools built in.

I also think that Glamorous Toolkit (https://gtoolkit.com/) might be a similar live environment, but I haven’t investigated it too much other than reading about it.

Is anyone else familiar with “modern” attempts at this?

by TheTaytay

6/24/2026 at 12:25:18 AM

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote:

"If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan:

- enter a market

- become a monopoly

- use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality"

A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising.

0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561...

by alexpotato

6/24/2026 at 12:10:45 PM

> Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising.

But Apple has not created any high quality shows.

Simply throwing money at something does not automatically make it good.

by dosisking

6/24/2026 at 1:18:02 PM

Crazy take. Severance, Silo, Pluribus just off the top of my head. You don’t think they are high quality shows?

by solumunus

6/24/2026 at 6:11:13 PM

No they are not. They are bland and unoriginal.

by dosisking

6/24/2026 at 2:13:08 AM

> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality

But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?

by matheusmoreira

6/24/2026 at 10:19:55 AM

Because you have the belief that you can generate a better ROI internally invested. Returning cash to shareholders is usually a negative sign for the company as it means they don't think they believe other companies will be better with the investment than themselves.

It's only recently in the share-buyback age that this investment is rarer.

The classic example is Amazon which was technically profitable for a while, but did not return shareholder cash for many many years, choosing to invest instead.

by zipy124

6/24/2026 at 3:57:43 AM

Unless mandated, why would the people controlling a corporation (and its budget) do that? While the corp has money in the bank, it's kinda their money, in the sense that they decide what to spend it on. If distributed back to the shareholders, the money evaporates from their perspective, so there's not much incentive to do it unless it's required, or unless they will benefit by it (e.g., they have a lot of stock themselves and would like the dividend).

by randallsquared

6/24/2026 at 4:08:45 AM

Corporations that have gone public are essentially lost causes. CEOs are incentivized to maximize shareholder profits at all costs, and it's much easier and cheaper to enshittify than to research and develop.

I suppose it's possible for privately owned corporations to be awesome. If the guy in charge cares, awesome things will happen. Valve is the only concrete example that comes to mind.

by matheusmoreira

6/24/2026 at 8:50:02 AM

In other words:

- enter a market

- become a monopoly

- use those monopoly profits to maintain your monopoly

A playbook that's very much alive in all big tech companies, from Apple to Oracle.

by sph

6/24/2026 at 6:55:09 AM

You can have the residential programming feel with SBCL; it's a pleasure.

by anonzzzies

6/24/2026 at 2:17:37 AM

I had a Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine, ran InterLisp-D on it for about two years, then slowed it down by installing Common Lisp on it.

Wonderful for Larry et.,al. to keep it going as open source.

by mark_l_watson

6/24/2026 at 7:32:18 AM

"Residential programming" isn't it similar to interepreter!! Difference I can think of is it can completely rewrite something instead of updating or extending it. ex. rewrite the existing function instead of re-defining it.

by virajk_31

6/24/2026 at 8:08:00 AM

The Interlisp manual defines residential programming like this:

«The "residential" style, where you stay inside the environment throughout the development, is essential for these tools to operate.»

https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17

by pamoroso

6/24/2026 at 11:40:18 AM

Does this need anything beyond interactive REPL? If so: what?

by RetroTechie

6/24/2026 at 1:18:46 PM

An image-based execution model.

In Common Lisp, the compiled code and data are both saved as a memory snapshot, kind of like an OS image (think an ISO you can boot into). This means you can hot-swap the code part, while keeping the data and run-time configuration, on a running system.

A REPL is part of it, but it's not the whole picture.

by kode-targz

6/23/2026 at 11:54:12 PM

Getting "too many requests" at the moment.

by emmelaich

6/24/2026 at 12:45:42 AM

[dead]

by animanoir

6/24/2026 at 1:21:41 AM

[flagged]

by Ozzie-D