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by lispm 6011 days ago
One branch of Lisp Machines originated at the MIT: the CONS and CADR Lisp Machines. If Kent was at the MIT and was using Zmacs and ZMail, those ran on the CADR already. Lisp Machines from Symbolics, LMI and TI were later based on the hardware and software from the MIT, but they used new processors and the OS was extended. MIT stopped developing the CADR and bought the machines and software from TI and Symbolics, then.

Kent said that he implemented things in TECO that people thought were possible only on the Lisp Machine. Writing software on the Lisp Machine was usually easier than, say, in TECO.
1 comments
garnet7 6011 days ago
Thanks for the reply, lispm.

> Lisp Machines from Symbolics, LMI and TI were later based on the hardware and software from the MIT, but they used new processors and the OS was extended.

Ok, after some more reading, I think I'm getting the picture. Genera was the OS on the Symbolics Lisp machines, and the MIT Lisp machines ran some other similar OS. Genera's roots though were in the code from MIT.

> Kent said that he implemented things in TECO that people thought were possible only on the Lisp Machine.

Right. I don't get this. If he's a fan of Lisp machines, why bother spending time implementing solutions to tough problems in TECO instead of whatever Lisp his Lisp machines were running?

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lispm 6011 days ago
Genera was Symbolics' marketing name for their proprietary fork of the Lisp Machine OS.

TECO was THE editor for years - on PDPs. Its macros look like line noise (if you know what I mean). Emacs was 'invented' as a bunch of Editor MACroS for TECO. Now comes a new generation of machines (personal workstations). Kent was young and tried to show them that with software written TECO could do stuff like Zmacs (the first Emacs written in Lisp) or Zmail (a Zmacs-based mail-reader). TECO died anyway. The Emacs for Multics was also written in Lisp and got popular among Multics users.

TECO was available for everyone who had access to a terminal that had some connection to a PDP (or similar). The Lisp Machine OS had this $100000 hardware dongle - the Lisp Machine.

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astine 6011 days ago
> Right. I don't get this. If he's a fan of Lisp machines, why bother spending time implementing solutions to tough problems in TECO instead of whatever Lisp his Lisp machines were running?

Because he wasn't so big a fan of Lisp Machines that he didn't get annoyed by their fanboys. He's relating this annecdote to demonstrate that he is not sijmply a die-hard Lisp Machine afficianado who can't let go.

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