Yesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto │Smalltalk-76 Demo

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Recommends pjmlp · 2020-05 · on “Advanced Programming Languages (2009)”

Anything based on the workstation concepts explored at Xerox PARC, and further pursued at ETHZ, TI and Genera. Bitsavers has all the necessary papers and manuals, and computer museum as well. Here are some video sessions. "Yesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto │Smalltalk-76 Demo" [this video] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" [LINK] "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" [LINK] "The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer" [LINK] The end of the road from Plan 9, Inferno. [LINK] [LINK]

Cites mikelevins · 2021-01 · on “On Repl-Driven Programming”

That's a good suggestion. Walking through a set of interactions is a solid idea. For what it's worth, there are some videos around of people actually doing it with Lisp and Smalltalk systems, and pjmlp already posted a pile of them elsewhere in this thread. I can add a few more: Kalman Reti walking through some interactions with a Symbolics LispM repl: [LINK] Brian Mastenbrook demonstrating Interlisp's SEDIT structure editor in the Xerox Lisp environment: [LINK] Rainer Joswig (lispm here on HN) showing us a little bit of repl and Zmacs interaction on a Symbolics Lisp Machine: [LINK] Rainer again, showing some simple interactions with Macintosh Common Lisp, which was my daily driver for years

Cites pjmlp · 2021-06 · on “Try APL”

> Thanks for sharing, I love these types of stories. Really makes me pine for the "old" days, and wonder if there's a parallel universe where technology took a very different route such that languages like APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are used instead of JavaScript, Java, and C#, and what that world looks like. Easy, here is some time travel, "Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at "Intertwingled" Festival" [LINK] "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" [LINK] "Yesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto │Smalltalk-76 Demo" [this video] However to be fair, Java, C# and Swift alongside their IDEs are the closest in mainstream languages to that experience, unless you get to use Allegro, LispWorks or Pharo.

Cites pjmlp · 2021-07 · on “Rust for Linux redux”

Well ideas there are plenty to steal from, that is true. But maybe we could start by actually catching up with having full stack OSes written in safe systems programming languages. [LINK] [this video]

Cites nequo · 2023-05 · on “No_color”

The “natural” background for text is light though. Hard to find books, newspapers, or magazines that put a dark background behind text of any significant length. Accordingly, the Xerox Alto had a light background too, back in the 1970s. Demonstrated here with Smalltalk: [this video] And here with a GUI based text editor: [LINK]

Cites tcard · 2023-12 · on “IDEs we had 30 years ago”

I think it's fair to say Smalltalk(s) have had in many aspects the most advanced IDE in existence at every moment since its introduction. Demos for a couple old versions: [this video] Demo for Pharo: [LINK]

Cites morphle · 2025-02 · on “Homemade polarimetric synthetic aperture radar drone”

You won't get any reliable numbers during wartime. I heard Ukrainian government recently mention they ordered a million. Hundreds of small companies (around 10 employees each) in Ukraine are making and assembling drone's right now (according to journalists who filmed them in Ukraine last month). I counted at least two dozen companies in the Netherlands, probably a few hundred all over Europe. Besides the frame that holds the 4 or six rotors together all other parts are off the shelf, mostly ordered from Shenzen. You can CNC mill a carbon fiber or aluminum frame from a single plate on an x-y flatbed cnc. I researched all this last night because I need $20K-$200k investment right now to start