
Scheme 9 from Empty Space, Reimagined - nils-m-holm
https://t3x.org/s9fes-reimagined/index.html
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spraak
The site is sincerely refreshing. I feel like I'm walking into a calm forest,
compared to the din of most any other website (HN would probably feel the same
if it were dark-themed).

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MaxBarraclough
I like the minimalism, but not the colour-scheme. I far prefer dark-on-light.

HN itself has it about right - minimalistic and easy to read.

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scardine
Your preference is backed by science:

> However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background
> are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate
> is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that
> participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with
> dark characters on a light background. Reference: Bauer, D., & Cavonius, C.,
> R. (1980). Improving the legibility of visual display units through contrast
> reversal. In E. Grandjean, E. Vigliani (Eds.), Ergonomic Aspects of Visual
> Display Terminals (pp. 137-142). London: Taylor & Francis

[https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/whic...](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/which-
is-easier-on-the-eyes-dark-on-light-or-light-on-dark)

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jandrese
> The test hardware was a Dell E6410 with a Core i5 CPU running at 750MHz

Is there a reason to downclock your CPU when running benchmarks? Is is trying
to reduce the effect of memory stalls?

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nils-m-holm
The Minix developer Kees J Bot once postulated that "the sum of CPU power and
user brain power is a constant", so I'm underclocking all my hardware in the
hope of gaining some IQ points.

More seriously: I cannot afford to buy new hardware on a regular basis and
heat is what kills hardware. That, and 750MHz is _plenty_ for everything I do.

~~~
peatmoss
At one point many years ago I realized that I was happy with approximately 486
CPU level performance. I wished at the time for a 486 built on Pentium fabs.
Of course simply scaling down the size of an old CPU probably doesn’t work,
but still, the energy performance trade-off is a valid one.

But then we figured out how to make software slow (all good and appropriate
abstractions, I’m sure) and I find myself wishing for faster CPUs again.

I’ve often wondered if it is just that I’ve gotten impatient or if performance
has actually not perceptionally improved much over the years.

This is why I like to visit the Living Computer Museum here in Seattle once in
a while. It turns out that even very old systems feel snappy at some tasks
even by today’s standards.

UI and interactive features are generally fast, but there’s no getting around
the slowness of say rendering a fractal.

Kudos to you for this work and a fun and interesting website. It reminds me of
the recent “This Old Lisp” posting.

~~~
andai
Worth noting that an 80s computer would already draw the key you pressed on
the screen, while the same keypress would still be bouncing around the
transistors of a modern USB keyboard.

[https://danluu.com/input-lag/](https://danluu.com/input-lag/)

[https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/](https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/)

"Old computers did it better!"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wDtxYeJdzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wDtxYeJdzg)

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gumby
Does the choice of shallow rather than deep binding have any semantic impact
in practice?

~~~
nils-m-holm
The difference cannot be exposed by a Scheme program, so no.

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wbl
Why this implementation over Chez now that Chez is free? Or Racket?

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nils-m-holm
There are dozens of Scheme implementations. Are they all obsolete now that
Racket exists and Chez Scheme is free? I don't think so! There are lots of
sweet spots and lots of implementation to fill the niches. This is something I
really like about Scheme!

Scheme 9 is small, super-portable (it only requires a C89 compiler, no
libraries, no language extensions), and quite easy to grok if you are into
studying the internals.

Edit: typos. This is what you get for replying right after your afternoon nap.
:)

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nine_k
Tl;dr: a modern, non-naive implementation, much faster than previous.

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seletz
I wonder if the book will be updated?

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seletz
Clicked too fast.

From the website: "The book might eventually get an update, if circumstances
permit."

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gpvos
Where's the source code?

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kryptiskt
It's a bit hidden, but linked:
[https://t3x.org/s9fes/index.html](https://t3x.org/s9fes/index.html)

~~~
gpvos
Ah, I somehow thought that that was the previous version (not "reimagined"),
but it's actually up-to-date.

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svan99
cool. Will this help klong as well?

~~~
nils-m-holm
Klong already uses bytecode internally, although it is not as efficient as the
one in S9 Reimagined. I doubt that adopting the new abstract machine would
help that much, because Klong spends most of it time evaluating built-in
operators anyway.

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padwan
I hope its as good as the movie (considered by some to be the worst movie ever
made). Read the trivia/goofs on its IMDB page, its hilarious.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Outer_Space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Outer_Space)

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052077/)

