why is there not a lisp pc?
in [Lisp]
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From: Pillsy on 29 Dec 2009 14:04 On Dec 29, 1:41 pm, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...] > As Pascal remarked above, you can write a Lisp VM on an Intel > PC and have your very own Lisp Machine, with many (if not all) > of the claimed benefits. But no one is doing this, so the > benefits must be quite small. It just means benefits don't outweigh not having a decent web browser. But they could be amazingly huge and still not make up for that lack. Cheers, Pillsy
From: Alan Mackenzie on 29 Dec 2009 16:34 Tamas K Papp <tkpapp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:50:46 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote: >> Tamas K Papp <tkpapp(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> I have noticed that some people are nostalgic about Lisp Machines, >>> and I appreciate the sentiment, but to me they look like nothing but >>> a glorious dead end. And incidentally, the failure of the Lisp >>> Machine market provided another opportunity for people to write Lisp >>> off. >> Yes indeed. The Intel PC (language: C) won over the Lisp Machine >> (language: lisp). My own opinion (for what it's worth) is that it >> takes a much more capable programmer to master Lisp than C, and in the >> late 1980s there weren't enough Lispers around to make a PC priced LM >> economic. > Sorry, but this rationalization sounds like sour grapes. > The Intel PC is not a "C machine": various CPU designs are equally > close to C, the Intel PC is not special. All these CPU designs are targetted at "C-like"/"Fortran-like" languages, primarily made up of sequential computations and assignment statements with function calls being relatively rare. That's what I meant by "C", and I should have been clearer. > The architecture won because it was cheap and _general_. Generality is > the key. You can jolly well program Lisp on an Intel PC, but what if > you want to use a significantly different language on a Lisp machine? You can compile that language with the lisp machine as the target architecture. The lisp machine is just as general, it just emphasises languages dominated by heavily nested function calls, rather than those made up of assignment statements. The architectures that came to dominate (Intel, Motorola 68000, some RISCs) did so because "C-like" languages had far more programmers that "lisp-like" languages. > So unless you are 100% sure you want Lisp, you will not risk buying an > expensive specialized machine. Indeed. Not now, at any rate. Back in the mid 1980s, all machines were expensive, the recently appeared IBM-PC with it's 4.7 MHz 8-bit chip, and 256kB of RAM retailing at (?) ~$5000. > Having specialized hardware is always very expensive. Given the high > price of competent labor and the labor intensiveness of hardware design > & development, it is rarely worth it. There are of course exceptions, > and flexible options (eg FPGAs) make specialized hardware viable in > some limited scenarios. Yes. > Tamas -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
From: Citizen Jimserac on 30 Dec 2009 01:41 On Dec 29, 1:41 pm, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 09:59:25 -0800, Citizen Jimserac wrote: > > Gavino has a point and implies something, I think, which I will try to > > extrapolate on. > > Gavino doesn't even understand his own questions, even if they > accidentally make sense. Him having a point is a rather far-fetched > idea. > > > Observe the appalling waste of money on cancer "research" - yes some > > breakthroughs over the years, even major ones, but how much of that > > money is being wasted, one wonders, on barking up the wrong tree in the > > wrong forest for the wrong reasons. See "The Secret History of the War > > on Cancer" by Davis for details. > > > Think of the impact that freely available Lisp Machine and Symbolics > > type software would have on these activities! > > You didn't provide any arguments to substantiate this. I don't deny > the possibility that Lisp machines are a neat thing to have, but to > argue that they provide some magical benefit that revolutionizes > cancer research etc is nonsensical. I disagree but without a common frame of reference, it is impossible to convince you!! I see them as computational engines of enormous power, far in advance of their time, but based on development paradigms which are very likely foreign to both of us and of which I have only an inkling. That is the problem. Seen in the context of the eclipse or visual studio design, compile, link, test, debug cycle, those paradigms may appear to you to be archaic curiosities. This explains your inability to conceptualize how they might be of any use in anything - including cancer research! > Here is a puzzle for you: if Lisp machines are so great, why don't we > have any nowadays? It is not that they are prohibitively expensive to > make. As Pascal remarked above, you can write a Lisp VM on an Intel > PC Excuse me? A microcoded one? That's NOT something you dash off in an afternoon!! and have your very own Lisp Machine, with many (if not all) of the > claimed benefits. I MOST VOCIFEROUSLY disagree! I don't think you have a clue as to what those machines can do. But no one is doing this, so the benefits must be > quite small. Disagree completely but, what the hell, this is just my opinion. Nothing more. I'm just stating an opinion off the top of my head. I've no agenda, need to prove nothing and welcome your opinion as being as good as mine or better! It took Schelter something like 20 years of negotiations to bring us Maxima. Would you have told us that it was probably not worth the trouble if he had failed and we had never seen it? I've had my say and will shut up - ponder what I said. Those who are interested can google for more info on what those old machines could do. It's out there. Thanks Citizen Jimserac (James Pannozzi)
From: Friedrich Dominicus on 30 Dec 2009 02:56 Alan Mackenzie <acm(a)muc.de> writes: > > Indeed. Not now, at any rate. Back in the mid 1980s, all machines were > expensive, the recently appeared IBM-PC with it's 4.7 MHz 8-bit chip, and > 256kB of RAM retailing at (?) ~$5000. Atari ST? Amiga? Regards Friedrich -- Please remove just-for-news- to reply via e-mail.
From: Mahesh Subramaniya on 30 Dec 2009 02:31
On 12/29/09 12:28 PM, gavino wrote: > why is there not a lisp pc for under $300? > > with power of lisp could be quite grand.. So, why do we need a lisp PC basically? I'm a novice user in lisp. Trying to understand few things in the world of Lisp. - MS. |