[coldtea]

>One of the reasons why the Lisp machines died out is that round about the mid-80s or so, compiler technology improved for generic 32-bit processors, and it became possible to run Lisp software on a VAX, 68k, or RISC CPU faster than it ran on the Lisp machines' bespoke architecture.

I'd say Lisp machines died out because Lisp died out (commercially). Other languages got popular, the second AI winter didn't help at all either.

If Lisp itself had fared better (even if it was on generic hardware), Lisp machines could have been saved too, they could still use a VAX, 68k, or RISC CPU underneath, and optimize for the developer experience. Or they'd have turned Lisp machines from hardware into a "Lisp machine" OS or IDE/REPL/etc environment for other OSes succeeding. But none of that took off.

[bitwize]

> Or they'd have turned Lisp machines from hardware into a "Lisp machine" OS or IDE/REPL/etc environment for other OSes succeeding.

You mean like Allegro CL? LispWorks? Genera on DEC Ultrix?

With the exception of Genera, these solutions are available, maintained, and supported today. Even Genera hung on for a good few years. Lisp machines started to wane a few years before the AI winter hit in full force, because the idea of dedicated hardware to run Lisp programs made sense when your alternative was Maclisp struggling on a PDP-10, but became expensive, slow, and fiddly compared to the generic boxes running fast 32-bit processors with, again, much improved compiler tech. Genera on DEC Alpha, even as an interpreted VM, was so much faster than any of Symbolics's bespoke CPU architectures that Symbolics just quit making hardware and declared the Alpha version of Genera the official upgrade path.

[rjsw]

One road not taken would have been to port the MIT/LMI/TI Lisp Machine software to stock hardware, it was 32-bit until the end so didn't need an Alpha as the host. A fast 68020 with a custom MMU would have been fine. There was only around 12k of "assembler" to rewrite to provide the VM and simple RTOS.

[coldtea]

>You mean like Allegro CL? LispWorks? Genera on DEC Ultrix?

None of these cover my whole description, namely the last part:

"Or they'd have turned Lisp machines from hardware into a "Lisp machine" OS or IDE/REPL/etc environment for other OSes SUCCEEDING".

I wasn't talking about mere existance of those.

My argument was "if the issue was not Lisp falling in adoption in general, but merely Lisp Machines being dedicated hardware (as the parent claimed), then Lisp OSes for generic hardware and Lisp IDEs/envs for popular OSes would have succeeded.

[lispm]

> Or they'd have turned Lisp machines from hardware into a "Lisp machine" OS or IDE/REPL/etc environment for other OSes succeeding.

That was a very different business model, very different offering into a different market. One could not move that business model easily, in an existing company to a different market. There were offices, factories, contracts, ... -> costs to get rid of. The thing collapsed, before anything usefully could be scaled down.

For example the Symbolics graphics products were very expensive, just the software. A new owner ported it to SGI and Windows NT machines. To be a technically viable product it used a commercial Lisp vendor. It survived a while in that market (modelling/animation/game tools for game studios, animation studios, ...), changed owners again and then died.

Lisp (the forbidden word during/after the AI Winter) was a part of the problem, but generally a new business model and customers for it wasn't found/searched. For example TI just closed its AI business and never cared about it from then on.

Something like Genera was a huge pile of Lisp code written during 1.5 decades. During its best times the OS and maintenance upgrades were already more expensive than a PC.

Applications from the Lisp Machine were ported away. One no longer needed the OS and no longer had the OS. Some applications died, some survived, some died later.

Some applications (or the development environment) survived for some years on emulators (-> Interlisp-D was ported to SUNs and PCs, Genera was ported to DEC Alpha).

[skissane]

> Something like Genera was a huge pile of Lisp code written during 1.5 decades. During its best times the OS and maintenance upgrades were already more expensive than a PC.

Genera's biggest contemporary problem is that John C. Mallery seems to want to just sit on it rather than make it available to people.

Likely future revenues must be close to nil, so why not open source it? Apparently he talked about it years ago but never actually has.

Yes, a lot of the code is really dated, but if it were open source, maybe some people might freshen some of it up.

[lispm]

The MIT has open sourced their Lisp Machine software.

https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/

[bitwize]

Franz and LispWorks are still in business through several boom-bust cycles. You never specified, what are your criteria for success? Some market share percentage? My point was, the second AI winter happened, but interest in Lisp machines waned first, because Lisp on generic processors reached a point where they could run the same code faster for less money.

[zozbot234]

> Or they'd have turned Lisp machines from hardware into a "Lisp machine" OS

Emacs is that Lisp OS. But it's still lacking a good text editor.

[pfdietz]

Ok, that made me laugh.