Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a vivid look at live, interactive programming environments and what Xerox PARC built on very limited hardware.
What it is
A roughly two-hour demonstration by Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk running on the Computer History Museum's restored Xerox Alto. It shows the integrated environment and language designed at Xerox PARC as personal dynamic media.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec peterkelly · 2022-10 · on “Stop Writing Dead Programs”
Since the talk was already posted yesterday, here's another great related video that is well worth watching: Dan Ingalls demonstrating Smalltalk 76 on a restored Xerox Alto. [this video] This is where it all started and it's truly amazing what they achieved on such limited hardware.
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" [LINK] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" [this video] "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]
Recommends pjmlp · 2021-01 · on “On Repl-Driven Programming”
Be prepared to be amazed with what Xerox PARC and others were doing, while Bell Labs was busy pushing for UNIX. "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" [LINK] "Emulating a Xerox Star (8010) Information System Running the Xerox Development Environment (XDE) 5.0" [LINK] "Documents as User Interfaces Video Demo" [LINK] "SYMBOLICS S-PACKAGES 3D GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION DEMO" [LINK] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" [this video] "Action!, the worlds first dynamic interface builder - 1988" (Interface Builder percursor, written in Lisp) [LINK] "The Interlisp programming environment" [LINK] And the cherry, how Lucid used Lisp ideas for their Energize C++ IDE, including an image based format
Recommends MaxLeiter · 2022-03 · on “The wild world of non-C operating systems”
I’ve been on a Smalltalk binge the last few days and have really been enjoying this two hour long interview / demo with Dan Ingalls on Smalltalk and the Alto: [this video]
Cites pjmlp · 2020-09 · on “Nova by Panic”
It is a bit hard to explain in an HN comment something that requires live experience, You can start by having a look at, [LINK] "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" [LINK] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" [this video] "SYMBOLICS CONCORDIA ONLINE DOCUMENTATION HYPER TEXT MARKUP 1985" [LINK] You can see how NeXT builds on many of these concepts on the famous "NeXT vs Sun" marketing piece, [LINK] Sun also had some ideas along these lines with NeWS, "NeWS: A Networked and Extensible Window System," [LINK] Naturally OS/2, BeOS, Windows, macOS, iOS, and even Android share some of the ideas. Now, before I proceed note that actually modern Linux distributions have all the tooling to ma
Cites Rochus · 2021-06 · on “Building the First GUIs”
Bravo was modal, Gypsy was non-modal, Smalltalk-74 onwards had multi-windows (including pop-up menus) and a metaphorical desktop. I assume you know these interesting presentations: [LINK] , [this video] EDIT: see also e.g. [LINK]
Cites peterkelly · 2022-10 · on “Stop Writing Dead Programs [video]”
The ideas he's promoting aren't new, and in fact predate even the NES. They date back to Smalltalk, which was created at Xerox PARC in the 1970s: [this video]
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