>the notion of programming being a way to use the computer, not just to construct software - and the way each piece of software in the system was practically an API for my own use.
I've never used a Lisp machine, but based on your description, it sounds like the experience of using them might have been somewhat like using the Oberon system created by Niklaus Wirth- or the other way around (based on a BYTE magazine article [1] about Oberon that I read, IIRC - never used Oberon either).
[1] I thought so because this part of your comment:
>the way each piece of software in the system was practically an API for my own use
matched somewhat with something I read in that BYTE article, which was something to the effect that once you had written a subroutine in Oberon, it could be called from anywhere in the OS. IOW, in a sense, the whole OS was like a single program, that you could program. Cool concept.
Though the Oberon system might have been much less evolved, or whatever - as I said, used neither, just interested in the thing.
[ Wirth has reportedly told the joke that, because Europeans pronounce his name properly, while Americans pronounce it as "nickel's worth", he is called by name in Europe and called by value in America. ]
I had access to the Native Oberon version during the 90's.
Oberon was inspired by Mesa/Cedar, there are quite a few Xerox papers about how Mesa/Cedar used to work. This is probably the most relevant one.
Think about a Lisp/Smalltalk environment, but based on a strong typed language instead.
Regarding Oberon, it had similar ideas.
Basically there were no programs, only modules (strong typed dynamic libraries).
Any procedure/function that had a special type signature could be called from the CLI environment, UI action, or after selecting an UI element, depending on the way the mouse buttons were used.
Also the environment was focused on graphics not plain text.
The last version before Active Oberon was introduced, System 3 with Gadgets, had quite nice Amiga style GUI.
>Basically there were no programs, only modules (strong typed dynamic libraries).
>Any procedure/function that had a special type signature could be called from the CLI environment, UI action, or after selecting an UI element, depending on the way the mouse buttons were used.
>Also the environment was focused on graphics not plain text.
Pretty cool. Thanks for mentioning it.
>You can find tons of screenshots on my site.
I googled for your HN username + " site"; is it this one:
Earlier Wirth designed a personal workstation called Lilith with a stack-architecture CPU and Modula-2 as its system programming language. This was in many ways similar to Smalltalk or Lisp Machines, but with reduced complexity.
Interesting. I do seem to remember that there was a BYTE magazine article about the Lilith computer too (or maybe I read about it somewhere else, it was a while ago). Also remember some issue(s) of BYTE that had articles about stack machines, which were a bit of a rage at one time, I think. I had read a bit about some of the pros and cons at the time.
Also seem to remember that the JVM implements a stack machine.
I've never used a Lisp machine, but based on your description, it sounds like the experience of using them might have been somewhat like using the Oberon system created by Niklaus Wirth- or the other way around (based on a BYTE magazine article [1] about Oberon that I read, IIRC - never used Oberon either).
[1] I thought so because this part of your comment:
>the way each piece of software in the system was practically an API for my own use
matched somewhat with something I read in that BYTE article, which was something to the effect that once you had written a subroutine in Oberon, it could be called from anywhere in the OS. IOW, in a sense, the whole OS was like a single program, that you could program. Cool concept.
Though the Oberon system might have been much less evolved, or whatever - as I said, used neither, just interested in the thing.
P.S. From the Wikipedia article about Wirth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth#Humor
[ Wirth has reportedly told the joke that, because Europeans pronounce his name properly, while Americans pronounce it as "nickel's worth", he is called by name in Europe and called by value in America. ]