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by pjmlp 42 days ago
UNIX still trying to catch up with Xerox workstations in the REPL experience, or general Lisp machines for that matter.

Inline graphics from 1981,

https://youtu.be/o4-YnLpLgtk?t=376

3 comments

Sometimes I really feel we're chasing UX that were solved in the Mother of all Demos (in 1968).

For those who haven't watched it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

Agreed.
That's not 3d
The example on the linked video it isn't, correct.

Here is another video, this time with S-PACKAGE used to develop Nintendo 64.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV5obrYaogU

Which given the REPL capabilities, you can easily embedd them on it, just like the other video.

Later rebranded as Mirai. I remember playing with a pirated copy of Nichimen Mirai somewhere in 2001 (I think), it looked weirdly Ediacaran in the Cambrian explosion of the late 90s.
So you're saying that the Xerox workstation didn't have inline 3d graphics rendering capabilities? And in fact this isn't an instance of UNIX trying to catch up to Xerox workstations' REPL from yester-decade?
that's a poorly chosen counter-complaint. before SGI, symbolics owned the market for 3d graphics. this was a world where you could also just do (create-window), see the window, and get back a handle you could use to draw in it. starting with X10 afterwards for me was like drowning in mud.
I think the original comment is actually a poorly chosen example vs me having a poorly chosen counter-complaint.
It's also from 2013
But that's not what was relevant to their comment.

"Here's this new thing that can Ⓧ!" "Pfft, Y could do X years ago."

Well, Ⓧ ≠ X. Come on now, we're programmers here.

Just noting how every single part of that was wrong.
I'm actually not sure what you're saying. Are you implying inline 2d graphics are the same as inline 3d graphics? That's what the subtitle of Ratty was about. And that's not what was shown in original comment's video. Why does it matter if it was from 2013? It wasn't showing off the same thing as Ratty.
He was responding to "Inline graphics from 1981"
It is when you use a CRT instead of a flat panel.
Or TempleOS.
People joke about templeos a lot, but it had some really neat ideas (holy-c is a pretty nice language)
I've dug around the TempleOS codebase a bit, and while it certainly is impressive for a single guy's work, I think there's been an overcorrection where people act like Terry was some hyper genius instead of "a pretty smart guy".

I kind of got the impression that whenever Terry didn't know how to do something, he would just convince himself that that's not what God wanted anyway and stop doing it.

I like that mindset. "This bug is not meant to be solved."
I don't think most people actually believe he was one of the smartest people of all time or anything. He was obviously a seriously talented programmer, and impressively so: when you consider the number of humans that can program at all on earth, and then the number that can write a compiler, and a complete operating system/desktop environment/shell/games, while suffering from severe mental illness no less—you end up with a vanishingly small group.
Most of the people we think of geniuses are not smarter than the average smart person, but they persevered more. Terry had the ultimate driver of perseverance: severe mental illness.
It should have been HolyBasic. Mistyping a HolyC indirection in an editor causes the OS to crash.
We would still have an issue with bad POKEs though.
It didn't cause a problem in my Commodore 64. ROM4L
That was a work of art. Also Oberon.
and plan9

also smalltalk

we used oberon in one class in university. i don't remember much unfortunately.

>work of art

more like theopneustos

Even Terry Davis wasn't that bold.
Well he did admit this possibility

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8IEzXnMYk

Given that Terry described the manic episodes as "a revelation from God" I think theopneustos is an accurate description. It just means "God Breathed" or "Inspired by God"
Oh, yeah that does make sense now that I think about it.
I came here to mention how it reminded me of the sick 3D icons TempleOS had in its terminal
The announcement blog post (https://blog.orhun.dev/introducing-ratty/), which would've been a better submission URL, unsurprisingly says that TempleOS was the direct inspiration of the project.