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[CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp

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Ergonomics of the Symoblics Lisp machine - reflections on the developer
productivity
http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics

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The Lisp Machine was a real workstation for the AI software developer.
It was not a personal computer to play games, browse the web, watch
DVDs or copy music from your friends. It was also not a multi-user
server. It was initially designed as a powerful single-user workstation
supporting the development of complex Artificial Intelligence software.
Its main task was to enable the software developer to write the most
complex programs possible. It was also grounded in the believe that
software development is best done by small groups of very good software
engineers working in a networked environment. Users that demanded and
got the best tool. The base system started with $70,000. A tool whose
keyboard was as expensive as a PC today. It didn't come with lots of
'media' keys on the keyboard, the operating systems wasn't dumbed down
to the least educated user. It was from experts for experts. It was
completely programmable with all source code. It was also not for
'playing' around - for that it was too expensive. As a software
developer you could focus on your task and the whole operating system
was supporting you. There was no piece of software that was not
accessible in a few mouse clicks. Everything could be inspected,
everything was up for modification. Software was live and dynamic. Not
dead and static like today. There was no boundary between software
development and software usage. The software was directly connected to
the hardware. A keypress runs a Lisp function - written in an
high-level language. The Lisp function talks to the chips and
interfaces.
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Why did Symbolics fail?
by Dan Weinreb (I think)
http://danweinreb.org/blog/why-did-symbolics-fail/

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The following is oversimplified but should be good enough. My old
friends are very welcome to post comments with corrections or
additions, and of course everyone is invited to post comments.

First, remember that at the time Symbolics started around 1980, serious
computer users used timesharing systems. The very idea of a whole
computer for one person was audacious, almost heretical. Every computer
company (think Prime, Data General, DEC) did their own hardware and
their own software suite. There were no PCs’, no Mac’s, no
workstations. At the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, fifteen
researchers shared a computer with a .001 GHz CPU and .002 GB of main
memory.

Symbolics sold to two kinds of customers, which I’ll call primary and
secondary. The primary customers used Lisp machines as software
development environments. The original target market was the MIT AI Lab
itself, followed by similar institutions: universities, corporate
research labs, and so on. The secondary customers used Lisp machines to
run applications that had been written by some other party.

We had great success amongst primary customers. I think we could have
found a lot more of them if our marketing had been better. For example,
did you know that Symbolics had a world-class software development
environment for Fortran, C, Ada, and other popular languages, with
amazing semantics-understanding in the editor, a powerful debugger, the
ability for the languages to call each other, and so on? We put a lot
of work into those, but they were never publicized or advertised.

But we knew that the only way to really succeed was to develop the
secondary market. ICAD made an advanced constraint-based computer-aided
design system that ran only on Symbolics machines. Sadly, they were the
only company that ever did. Why?
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-- 
RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com>

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[CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-06-13 11:37 +0000
  Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2014-06-13 09:44 -0700
    Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2014-06-13 19:06 +0000
    Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-06-13 21:03 +0000
      Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-06-15 10:36 +0000
        Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Robert Swindells <rjs@fdy2.co.uk> - 2014-06-15 13:03 +0000
          Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> - 2014-06-15 16:11 -0700
            Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2014-06-15 16:34 -0700
              Re: [CM] Two interesting articles on Symbolics/Lisp Robert Swindells <rjs@fdy2.co.uk> - 2014-06-16 08:48 +0000

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