some history of computing and celebrities [was lisp machinekeyboards]

[Xah Lee]

lisp machine keyboards.

• Knite keyboard. I think this is one of the earlist.http://world..std.com/~jdostale/kbd/Knight.html

• Symbolics earlier style keyboard (PN 364000), by Peter Painehttp://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/photos/IO/kbd-older.html

Symbolics later model Symbolics keyboard PN 365407 Rev C
at Joey Devilla's blog, several hi quality photoshttp://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/02/05/hacklabtos-lisp-machine-keyboard/

also at Rainer site, with info on how to use it on mac os xhttp://lispm.dyndns.org/news?ID=NEWS-2008-07-27-1

one of the most funny comment from Joey's blog is:
“Man, my pinkies are getting tired just looking at that thing.â€

of course, the most baroque, showy, with a fancy name is the
Space-cadet keyboard
 http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

Space-cadet! LOL.

btw, how did that name came to be?

  Xah
∑http://xahlee.org/

☄

while nosing about lisp machines, i checked out the Wikipedia article
on Symbolics again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics

it's content has improved significantly since last year or so i
checked.

My firts daily use of computer or owning one is ~1991, and didn't
really become pro after 1995. So, lisp machines are before my time.
Though, i have already had some interest in lisp history and have
strong interest in the the history of how the motherfucking unix
tookover its/lisp/vms/whatnot war. Reading such history is usually not
easy, because you are bombarded with many OSes or technologies that
you are not familiar and really difficult to understand its situation
without having lived in the tech of that era...

anyhow, check out some of the interesting tidbits in the article:

«Symbolics staffers Dan Weinreb, David Moon, Neal Feinberg, Kent
Pitman, Scott McKay, Sonya Keene and others made significant
contributions to the emerging Common Lisp language standard from the
mid-1980s through the release of the ANSI Common Lisp standard in
1994»

There, Dan Weinred, Kent Pitman, 2 guy who still write here sometimes,
are mentioned. (Kent i knew as a online acquaintance since ~2000 here.
Dan i knew only last year.)

Also note how Richard Stallman, who the open sourcing or FSF fuckheads
take to be a god unquestioned, who was at the time simply doing
questionable deeds. (note that in general, history doesn't have a
right and wrong. How came out as winner, is the hero.)

Given the Symbolic vs MIT/RMS situation, one can question what is the
interpersonal relation or formal relation between these people with
RMS. (in general, often many historical issue or truth cannot be
discussed when the persons are still alive, for many real life
complexities.)

Also of interest is tat Scott McKay, the Sun Micro guy, is there
too...

O, a wee bit of rambling.

«Advances in garbage collection techniques by Henry Baker, David Moon
and others, particularly the first commercial use of generational
scavenging, allowed Symbolics computers to run large Lisp programs for
months at a time.»

interesting to me is seeing the name Henry Baker. He has wrote a few
articles i've came cross in the past and enjoyed.

• “Buffer Overflow†Security Problems, (2001), by Henry G Baker
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.84.html#subj10.1

• Communications of the ACM 34, 4 (April 1991), 18. Henry G Baker,
1990. (On the harm of speed)
http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/letters/CACM-DubiousAchievement.html

• “Iterators: Signs of Weakness in Object-Oriented Languages†(1992)
By Henry G Baker.
http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Iterator.html

I'm posting this to python group too, for the last article above about
iterators. I whole heartedly agree to all Henry's opinions... often
today's hotshot programing morons have no understanding ****. Python 3
is going full with iterators and enumerators ****.

i'd link to few articles i wrote pertinent to some of the above
issues... but think rather not, since i've already done that often.

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄