[SPG_Active_Members] CHM History of Lisp web site noted on Hacker News

[Nigel Williams]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Larry Masinter <masinter at adobe.com> wrote:

> Nigel, could you say more about where your list came from? "Smalltalk for
> B5700" for example: Smalltalk without the interactive environment isn't
> really "Smalltalk", and "Ada for Symbolics" likely a federal purchasing
> mandate, rather than a useful (or used) system.
>
My list (from my website) is based on personal curiosity and
implementations that I judge to be special and worth preserving [1]. An
analogy I like to use is that for the history of painting it is possible to
tour many fine galleries and see the unbroken sweep of history in the
changing styles and technologies, pretty well back to the dawn of man.
Contrast with the increasingly patchy history of software artefacts
(covering a mere fraction of the span of time) and I suggest it will become
impossible (or at the very least increasingly difficult) to establish a
coherent history of ideas across the spectrum of early computing. My list
is not exclusive, as I learn more about a particular system, platform or
domain I find new things all the time that I would like to find out about
and see if the original implementation and toolchain can be found. The
hit-rate for recovery is very low (perhaps 5%?) and so it also helps to
have plenty of candidates to chase to keep one's enthusiasm buoyed.

Smalltalk for the B5700 - at least by the description was definitely
interactive (click the link to see the manual that describes how to
interact with the session).

Ada for Symbolics - to me a perfect intersection of several of my favorite
technologies: Symbolics, Genera, LISP, Ada and compiler implementation. I'd
be delighted to inspect and play with the implementation. How was it
implemented? who made it? what was the code-generator? did it fully
implement Ada? did it use Genera IPC? how were the tasking primitives
implemented? so many questions.


[1] There is a parallel aim to preserve as much of the Burroughs legacy as
we can manage to find and digitise. I would suggest that our group of
Burroughs enthusiasts want to see the legacy of Burroughs properly
represented in the annals of history. On that basis anything related to
Burroughs is a candidate so we can ultimately have the most complete
picture possible.
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