[PRL] AI Koans

[John Clements]

On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 01:12  PM, Richard C. Cobbe wrote:

> Lo, on Wednesday, April 30, Johan Ovlinger did write:
>
>> It would actually make a really fun pl-seminar: reviving the lisp
>> machine...  literally.
>
> I'll second the motion.
>
> I've heard a number of people with many years of experience rave about
> how wonderful the old Lisp machines were, and how much better they were
> than these silly little OSes we have to use today, and so forth.  I 
> have
> to admit, I tend to react to these folks in the same way that I react 
> to
> stories about walking 10 miles to school through the snow uphill both
> ways, but it would be interesting to actually sit down at a Lisp 
> machine
> and see what it was like, if for no other reason than to see what all
> the shouting's about.
>
> (If all else fails, I believe Shriram still has that old lisp machine 
> in
> his office at Brown, though I make no claims as to its condition, the
> availability of its system software, Shriram's willingness to loan it 
> to
> us, or the feasibility of getting it up here.)

As someone who has seen said machine running, let me urge all and 
sundry ... not to bother.  The experience goes like this:

oh, where's that dang cable?
oh, where's that dang mouse?
oh, where's the ... oh, okay.

okay, okay.

okay, we're switching it on.

Wow!  it booted!

Evaluate (map (lambda (x) (+ x 1)) (list 1 2 3))

hmm, seems to work!

<long pause>

...well, okay, back to work (shut down the machine).



This is a long-winded way of saying that there's no way to judge how 
wonderful a system is without using it for a while, and on larger 
projects.  There's no point in booting the thing just for a few 
minutes, except for nostalgia's sake.

john