
The Interlisp Programming Environment (1981) [pdf] - gruseom
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~andre/ics228s2006/teitelmanmasinter.pdf
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gruseom
Interlisp was the so-called "west coast" Lisp that emphasized an interactive
programming environment and in retrospect looks more like a hybrid between
Smalltalk and Lisp than modern Lisp implementations. It was developed at PARC
for a while. I don't know if there was cross-pollination between Interlisp and
Smalltalk or if the similarity was a zeitgeist thing.

This article talks about the design values of the system and communicates the
flavour of what a Smalltalkish Lisp would have been like.

As someone who's only read about this, I'd be interested in hearing from
people who actually used it.

~~~
fractallyte
It's very much like an early version of Smalltalk: monochrome, with an
early-80s style GUI. There's a popup main menu with a surprising number of
options, plus several editors, debugging tools, and a Smalltalk-like
'Transcript' window (for output). The system is image-based, so the running
image could be stopped and restarted, even from a different machine.

More intriguingly - and again, analogous to Smalltalk - Interlisp is more than
just another Lisp dialect: it's a complete operating system running atop a
Lisp VM, with Lisp as the system language, from top to bottom. Awesome!

By today's standards, it's clunky (as one would expect), but if development
had continued, I suspect the comparison to Symbolics Genera would be the
analog of comparing a GUI desktop environment to a console-based one.
Considering the richness of modern environments (have you seen Pharo or
Squeak?), that could've been a seriously cool Lisp development platform...

Incidentally, ParEdit is based on Interlisp's SEdit (in Taylor Campbell's
words, 'a real structure editor, not a cheesy imitation like paredit').

~~~
ScottBurson
> I suspect the comparison to Symbolics Genera would be the analog of
> comparing a GUI desktop environment to a console-based one

Huh? The MIT-class Lisp Machines also had GUIs from the beginning. Clunky by
modern standards, as you say, but definitely graphical.

Maybe I just don't get what analogy you're trying to draw.

~~~
fractallyte
Yes, you're right - I was mistaken (I was thinking of Slime/Emacs). Genera had
a proper hierarchical window system - screenshots just don't do it justice!

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mark_l_watson
I got a Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine running Interlisp-D in 1982 and enjoyed it
greatly. It had knowledge of code like modern IDEs making code inspection and
refactoring easier. Back then, it was like magic.

Now however, I prefer IntelliJ for Clojure and Java, and the similar IDE
RubyMine for Ruby development. I think very good IDEs are a spiritual
successor to the wonderful programming environment if my 1108.

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kps
Nice article. I have a Xerox 6085 "Daybreak" workstation that runs Interlisp.

An emulator exists, that runs on various *nix systems. It used to be available
for noncommercial use under here
[http://www2.parc.com/isl/groups/nltt/medley/](http://www2.parc.com/isl/groups/nltt/medley/)
but the links seem dead.

~~~
fractallyte
Email me if you want a copy... I also have it set up in a Debian image, ready-
to-run.

~~~
salgernon
Is it abandonware or is there still commercial interest in it?

