
Lisp 1.6 from the IBM 1130 - BruceM
http://ibm1130.org/sw/lisp
======
BruceM
I find this sort of software archeology fascinating. I wish there was a lot
more of it ...

I'd love to see runnable copies of T, EuLisp, Sk8, FramerD and so many other
things. It often feels like we lose so much of our history.

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
I'm in college, and I think they should teach us some computer/software
history. In every other science (not that CS is a science) they teach people
by telling them the stories of history. In chemistry, physics they go over all
great discoveries and explain what/who/how. Then students understand how thing
got to the way they are. And that gives them a vision for the future.

In our field, we just say: "What we have now is the best, because everything
gets better all the time. Therefore old technology is not interesting."

The most intesting stuff I learn when I'm researching history.

~~~
VLM
"Then students understand how thing got to the way they are. And that gives
them a vision for the future."

Maybe its intentionally avoided because it could be very depressing. My aunt
knows all about virtualized server images and oversubscription issues and
allocating networked storage appropriately to avoid thrashing and all the fun
of moving images from one clustered machine to the other and dealing with
images that make weird assumptions about being run natively rather than as an
image, and backups of a large virtualized data center, and disaster recovery
of virtualized data centers. Talking to her is just like talking to a 2013
vsphere admin. However she's not a 2013 vsphere admin, shes a retired
mainframe VM op/sysprog from 40 years ago in the 70s. Nothing has changed
since then other than some meaningless numbers and some trademarked marketing
terms.

Nothing is new in IT, and nothing EVER changes except trivia like numeric
quantities and trademarked marketing terms. Not just the product lifecycle,
but the concept lifecycle is very much like formulaic Hollywood movies. Once
you know its a romantic comedy you know exactly whats going to happen, from
the first marketing to the final announcement of unavailability.

~~~
pjmlp
The sad thing about it is that people keep on reinventing stuff and selling it
to young developers.

For example, Modula-2 and Turbo Pascal compilers were already having Go like
compilation speed back in the mid 80s.

Smalltalk and Lisp Machines environments offered features that current IDEs
still don't quite achieve, while offering desktop operating systems fully
coded in GC enabled languages.

Oberon language family used for doing desktop operating systems in a GC
enabled systems programming language, used for several years at Zurich
Technical University.

Distributed computing in the early 80s.

And many other things.

~~~
BruceM
Can you blame them really?

How do you run a Lisp Machine environment today? Or Oberon System 3 or v4 (I
never tried anything later)?

It is easy to reinvent and re-sell stuff when everything before is pretty much
no longer available.

I've had a few conversations lately with people who worked on some of this
stuff. A lot of history is totally gone.

~~~
pjmlp
I think one needs to be curious for knowledge.

I am reaching my 40's and back on the university we had lots of books and
papers since the early days of computing. Given my interest in compiler
development, I just devoured everything I could get my hands on.

So although I started coding around 1986, I managed to get hold of lots of
information.

------
abecedarius
I smiled on seeing Steele was already THE GREAT QUUX. (In the user manual.)
[http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Au...](http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/The%20Great%20Quux%20Poem%20Collection.html)

------
rbanffy
BTW, does anyone have documentation detailed enough to capture the fonts used
in the 2250 (a vector display, but I assume the font was built-in rather than
loaded from storage) and the 2260 (raster, generated at the terminal
controller via a grid of magnetic cores)? I did something with the 3270 family
[1], but I'd like to do more.

1- <https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font>

~~~
jaxb
FYI, there's a truetype font that replicates a VT220 --
<http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/>

~~~
rbanffy
I intentionally avoided the striped raster look. I didn't want to replicate
the vintage IBM look, but rather imagine what a 3278 terminal would look if
built with today's technology and 60's design.

------
treerex
It depresses me that GLS was a better programmer at 17 than I probably will
ever be.

