Symbolics Lisp Machine demo Jan 2013

Why HN readers recommended it

The go-to demo whenever HN discusses what Lisp machines were like and what modern shells and editors lack.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Kalman Reti

Topic

lisp machines

Format

demo

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

5

HN mentions in dataset

20

Recommendation years in dataset

2014–2024

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• See these demos for the kinds of interactive systems LISP enabled back in the day: [VIDEO] [LINK] It makes working on VSCode today look like banging rocks together, let alone 30 years ago.

• Since he did AI work in the 50's, probably a lot of his work was written in LISP or IPL, which had many of the concepts that LISP later used. Most of his high-profile inventions (Computer mice, Hypertext, Interactive Computers) were first commercialized on LISP …

• There's this recent video showing a little of what the Pharo Smalltalk environment is like: [LINK] The video was made by a Ruby programmer, rather than an experience Smalltalker, so it's more a newbie showing you cool things he's discovered, rather than an expert showing …