amoroso 5 months ago • 100%
1. What Lisp programming languages do you use?
I use pretty much only languages in the Lisp family. Since I'm a hobby programmer I'm the boss and get to decide what tools to use.
2. What non-Lisp programming languages do you use?
None, at least regularly.
3. What is your favorite Lisp programming language? Why?
Interlisp and Common Lisp because my daily driver is the wonderful Medley Interlisp development environment, which supports both dialects.
4. What is your favorite non-Lisp programming language? Why?
AWK. I love its combination of simplicity, abstraction, control paradigm, and support for rapid development.
5. What is that one thing about your favorite non-Lisp language that you wish to see in your favorite Lisp language?
I wouldn't necessarily want to see AWK or some of its features in Lisp. Some of these features are already in Lisp and, as for the others, I don't mind dusting off AWK itself when needed.
An exploratory programming environment for Common Lisp
amoroso 7 months ago • 100%
Learn to cook (which saves you money) and do all the house chores (including ironing).
amoroso 8 months ago • 100%
An interesting view. But the PET was definitely lower specced than the later 16/32-bit machines usually regarded as workstations.
amoroso 8 months ago • 100%
Yes, possibly.
amoroso 8 months ago • 100%
That's likely, but I wonder whether any other office workstations were actually developed.
Up to the 1990s there were workstations designed for software development (Lisp/Smalltalk Machines by various vendors), graphics and CAD (Apollo, SGI), and general purpose systems (Sun, HP). Was Xerox Star the only office workstation? Were there other dedicated workstations (not high-end PCs or Macs) designed for office and business tasks? Of course there were word processing machines. But I'm not sure they qualify as they didn't play in the same league as the Star and were much less versatile.
amoroso 8 months ago • 100%
Although it did have an nVidia card, my PC was an otherwise ordinary machine running Ubuntu, not a gaming rig or something custom built.
amoroso 8 months ago • 100%
I love Linux. But I got so exasperated with system updates breaking X-Windows and dropping me into the console with no clue what to do, for some time I intentionally deferred the updates.
I wanted a stable daily driver, so in 2015 I switched from Linux to ChromeOS. Now I'm back to Linux with the Crostini container of ChromeOS and Raspberry Pi OS on a Raspberry Pi 400.
amoroso 9 months ago • 100%
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K in the early 1980s when I was 17. My parents agreed to buy it and I used to device to learn about computers, which I was curious about as I had played a bit with the Apple IIe and the Sinclair ZX-81 of some classmates.
In 2024 it's 30 years since X3J13 approved ANSI Common Lisp in 1994. But when in the year? Is it known in which month or date was the standard approved? While many sources mention 1994 there doesn't seem to be much other metadata online. ## Update [I asked on comp.lang.lisp](https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/4cDmAXsnlN4/m/LAbe4hVPAAAJ): ANSI Common Lisp was approved on December 8, 1994.
amoroso 9 months ago • 100%
Because it's the most effective and powerful tool for putting the Unix philosophy into practice.
Disclosure: I'm a member of the Medley Interlisp Project.
amoroso 9 months ago • 100%
An alternative is to ask questions about features of the pitched product or offer.
amoroso 9 months ago • 83%
Possibly saving time and resources.
amoroso 9 months ago • 100%
Okay. But if a robocaller doesn't lead to results, it may be programmed to give up on unpromising numbers.
When receiving unsoliciting phone calls by telemarketers, many people consistently hung up, don't bait, and don't interact. So why don't telemarketers delete from their databases such phone numbers that don't lead to any sales or other business benefits? Maybe the cost of keeping the numbers is so low telemarketers just don't bother. Or keeping track of what numbers to delete may actually have a cost. Or perhaps telemarketers hope those people will eventually pick up the calls. Any insight?
amoroso 10 months ago • 100%
You're welcome, enjoy.
amoroso 10 months ago • 100%
There are plates with labels and information but they're small, easy to miss, and not for all items. But the venue is still relatively young and more work is underway.
amoroso 10 months ago • 100%
What's even more remarkable is 95% of the items on display still work. And they have lots more in storage.
They are car enthusiasts too, so that's why there are some such vehicles. The bulk of the material comes from the personal collection of one of the founders of the group.
My photos of a visit to the incredible [Ctrl+Alt Museum](https://www.ctrlalt.museum) retrocomputing museum in Pavia, Italy. Mind blowing.
amoroso 10 months ago • 93%
While I don't downvote posts with emojis I'm most interested in reading tech content, where emojis feel redundant and distracting.
amoroso 10 months ago • 100%
VokoscreenNG is a screencasting tool that works with Raspberry Pi OS, I tested it on my Pi 400. And it's also easy to install, just sudo apt install vokoscreen-ng gstreamer1.0-pipewire
.
I've updated the post.
amoroso 10 months ago • 97%
Lisp, the language that has them all.
amoroso 10 months ago • 100%
Looks nice indeed, thanks.
amoroso 10 months ago • 80%
Interesting suggestion but possibly overkill.
Can you recommend any screen video capture tools compatible with Wayland? I’ll use such a tool on my Raspberry Pi 400 under 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, so I'd prefer one with appropriate Debian binaries. ## Update [VokoscreenNG](https://linuxecke.volkoh.de/vokoscreen/vokoscreen.html) is a screencasting tool that works with Raspberry Pi OS, I tested it on my Pi 400. And it's also easy to install, just `sudo apt install vokoscreen-ng gstreamer1.0-pipewire`.
Can you recommend any screen video capture programs compatible with Wayland, possibly with Debian binaries? I'd like to use such a tool on my Raspberry Pi 400 under Raspberry OS Bookworm 64-bit.
amoroso 12 months ago • 100%
Text searches (e.g. page search in browsers) that do return results, but they don't show up anywhere on the screen or aren't highlighted.
amoroso 12 months ago • 100%
Which dialect of Lisp do you use?
Currently Interlisp and Common Lisp, mostly under Medley.
What problems do you solve?
I use Lisp for my hobby programming, not necessarily for solving practical problems. I enjoy coding for the intellectual pleasure of creating, exploring algorithms and systems, and learning computing.
Why do you choose Lisp to solve these problems?
I have been checking out several programming languages for the past four decades or so and Lisp is the only family of languages that doesn't just come the most natural to me, it gives me pure joy.
amoroso 12 months ago • 100%
When I was a brand new Mastodon user I published a post summarizing my experience on how to find people to follow and populate your feed.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Although I did see some punch cards I never used them. At the time I couldn't afford a computer with punch cards and was too young and inexperienced to work for an organization that had such machines.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Old fart Boomer here, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Reading computer magazines and books, and eagerly anticipating getting my hands on such material. Today's kids born in an online era of infinite content just can't imagine how difficult it was back them to get technical publications and information, printed or otherwise.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Ho letto tutto il testo e ribadisco la mia risposta che vale la pena di incaricare della riscossione un professionista in modo che se ne occupi, investendo così implicitamente in sicurezza una parte di quello che si riscuoterà tramite il professionista (che spiegherà nei dettagli come procedere).
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Se la vincita è consistente vale la pena di investirne una piccola parte per mettere al sicuro il resto, cioè chiedere la consulenza di un avvocato, un commercialista o un altro professionista. Altrimenti il rischio potrebbe essere troppo alto.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
I'm aware of those accounts but they aren't official.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
The accounts of space agencies such as NASA and ESA.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
- Which Lisp do you most often program in?
These days I use mostly Interlisp and Common Lisp under Medley, the restored and revived Interlisp-D environment of the Xerox Lisp Machines developed at Xerox PARC since the early 1980s.
- What does your Lisp development environment or IDE look like?
Here you can see some screenshots of my Medley environment. It comprises all the traditional Interlisp development tools such as the SEdit structure editor, the File Manager, and Masterscope.
- How did you get started with Lisp? Did you follow any particular articles to set up your environment or begin learning Lisp?
In the early 1990s I took an introductory computer science class based on SICP and fell in love with Scheme. I later learned Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp, and I've been programming almost exclusively in Lisp on and off since then.
Potete consigliare qualche gruppo di appassionati, eventi, mercatini, esposizioni, musei o iniziative di retroinformatica e retrogaming a Milano? Sono interessato a tutte le tecnologie informatiche vintage, non solo ai giochi.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Glad you liked the paper, I found this angle interesting too.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Possibly.
amoroso 1 year ago • 94%
So why not make the washing cycle end when the water has fully drained? I get the impression the timer starts after the drain.
Most washing machines have a timer that prevents you from opening the hatch just after the washing cycle ends. Instad you must wait for the timer to go off, usually a minute or two, before you can open the hatch. Why? Would letting the user open the hatch immediately after washing ends pose any safety or other issues?
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
You're welcome.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
I maintain a list of the tech and creator newsletters I subscribe to.
amoroso 1 year ago • 42%
My favorite is chromeOS because it requires zero maintenance and I can access all my data, apps, and preferences in minutes on any compatible device by just signing into my account.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
Lisp.
It just feels extremely natural to me, so it's difficult to pinpoint specific features I like. But two such features stand out: the parantheses-based syntax and the extreme interactivity.
amoroso 1 year ago • 100%
I use Google Play Books but I also like BookFusion.
Hyper-G was a distributed hypermedia system developed at the Graz University of Technology in Austria, overshadowed by the World Wide Web and now long forgotten. See this PDF overview article: [Hyper-G: A Large Universal Hypermedia System and Some Spin-Offs](https://ftp.isds.tugraz.at/pub/papers/report364.pdf).
Se passate in un bar nel pomeriggio o verso fine giornata noterete che in genere sono avanzati dei croissant integrali al miele, con marmellata ai frutti di bosco, o di altri tipi ma sepolti dallo zucchero a velo. Questo non sorprende perché probabilmente sono i tipi di croissant meno richiesti dai clienti. Quello che sorprende è che ne avanzino *così tanti*. Questa situazione viene notata dai gestori dei bar? Perché non provano a ordinare qualche pezzo in più dei croissant più richiesti, per esempio quelli alla crema o alla marmellata di albicocche, e qualche pezzo in meno di quelli meno richiesti? Avete qualche ipotesi o esperienza diretta, specialmente se lavorate in un bar o nella ristorazione?
An informal newsletter in which Thorsten Ball, of *Writing an Interpreter in Go* and *Writing a Compiler in Go* fame, shares his thoughts about software engineering.
If you contact the customer support of your utility company, phone carrier, bank, or other service provider you'll likely be flooded with requests to rate the experience and provide feedback. Likewise, corporate websites and email communications often solicit feedback via embedded buttons or links to online forms. What's with this corporate obsession with customer feedback? Are these huge piles of feedback actually analyzed and acted upon? Is customer feedback some sort of corporate cargo cult? Or maybe clever marketing by vendors of feedback tools and services? The impression is the feedback is just discarded or ignored.
Feel free to comment here and/or on the linked Hacker News thread.
> Other publications do not count Chrome OS installations as part of the Linux share, but I think that’s nonsense – they’re both clearly Linux desktop operating systems, and should be added up.
The book *Let Over Lambda: 50 Years of Lisp* by Doug Hoyte (2008) seems good but I haven't seen it recommended or discussed much. I ordered a copy thinking it was some overlooked vintage classic, then realized it's a self-published work. The book is on its way to me and I read a few reviews. And yes it's opinionated, but the author [regrets the language](https://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/clarifications). Still, since the book is so intriguing, if you have any thoughts I'd be happy to read them.