DonHopkins
https://donhopkins.medium.com/bill-joys-law-2-year-1984-mill...
>The peak computer speed doubles each year and thus is given by a simple function of time. Specifically, S = 2^(Year-1984), in which S is the peak computer speed attained during each year, expressed in MIPS. -Wikipedia, Joy’s law (computing)
>“C++++-= is the new language that is a little more than C++ and a lot less.” -Bill Joy
>In this talk from 1991, Bill Joy predicts a new hypothetical language that he calls “C++++-=”, which adds some things to C++, and takes away some other things.
>“Java is C++ without the guns, knives, and clubs.” -James Gosling
I also saw Bill Joy's much earlier talk at the 1986 Sun Users Group in Washington DC, where he announced a hypothetical language he wanted to build called "C++++-=", and that he talked about in subsequent presentations.
I think that was the same talk when Bill said "You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN. It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar". More Bill Joy quotes:
https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-haters/slowlari...
At Educom in October 1988, I was running rotating demos of NeWS, pie menus, Emacs and HyperTIES on a Sun workstation at the Sun booth, for whoever walked by...
https://hyperties.org/databases/playground/sun-founders-big-...
I appreciate, appropriated, and built on top of your excellent definitive SIMH Type 340 display work, and I'm looking forward to incorporating your phosphor simulator! Imagine the beautiful trails that the Ultimate Hand will leave behind (direct manipulation power cycling via hand waving, implemented in Mitch's PDP-7 Forth):
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/ultimate-hand/
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Please let Gren know I'd love to hear from him, it's been a long time since I last visited him in Santa Cruz.
Those LOGOs are a treasure trove! Thanks for digging them all up and bringing them back to life. I consider LLOGO (and the others) to be classic computer science literature worthy of study and analysis and emulation. LLOGO is especially interesting and challenging to emulate since it speaks so intimately with such a wide range of cool devices.
An authentic historic LOGO Turtle with an accurate 3D model that draws with SVG instead of ink would be a perfect portrait to paint!
The portrait: a 3D cabinet with live lights, a hot tube, and hands:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23054174
>DonHopkins on May 2, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: History of Logo
>Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 12,480 lines of beautiful practical lisp code, defining where the rubber meets the road, with drivers for hardware like pots, plotters, robotic turtles, TV turtles, graphical displays, XGP laser printers, music devices, and lots of other interesting code and comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23054499
>larsbrinkhoff on May 2, 2020 [–]
>Also running on the emulator: PDP-10 Logo, PDP-11 Logo, Applle II Logo.
>The emulator doesn't support the robot arm yet.
Now my PDP-7 emulator supports fictional emulated devices like Turing Machine co-processor, an Ultimate Machine hardware accelerated switcher-offer, and a Data Hand (video data glove without the glove). Besides a PDP-6 emulator, PDP-10 emulator, PDP-11 emulator, with shared memory support to emulate AI's 10/11 interface, we also need a callable elevator emulator and a buzzable door lock emulator!
The idea is that these device emulators can plug into all kinds of different machine emulator, just like the real Type 340 display can plug into a PDP-1, PDP-6, PDP-7, or even plug its emulator into an Apple ][ emulator (I'm using and extending MicroM8)!
Mitch's Forth is the ideal way to integrate those fictional device emulators with the real type 340 display device emulator in the PDP-7 emulator. And I'm reincarnating my Apple ][ Forth and terminal emulator, which I lost the source code to long ago, but can decompile and disassemble itself, to reverse engineer a buildable source code base.
Cabinet Manifesto:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Plugging devices into multiple machines:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
The DataHand, layer by layer:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
How a device reaches a machine:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Architecture and Lineage: Devices can travel farther than CPUs:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
More (old) Forth Stuff (mentioning the Forth system I'm recovering):
https://donhopkins.com/home/catalog/lang/forth.html
>The first Forth system I used was Cap'n Software Forth, on the Apple ][, by John Draper. The first time I met John Draper was when Mike Grant brought him over to my house, because Mike's mother was fed up with Draper, and didn't want him staying over any longer. So Mike brought him over to stay at my house, instead. He had been attending some science fiction convention, was about to go to the Galopagos Islands, always insisted on doing back exercises with everyone, got very rude in an elevator when someone lit up a cigarette, and bragged he could smoke Mike's brother Greg under the table. In case you're ever at a party, and you have some pot that he wants to smoke and you just can't get rid of him, try filling up a bowl with some tobacco and offering it to him. It's a good idea to keep some "emergency tobacco" on your person at all times whenever attending raves in the bay area. My mom got fed up too, and ended up driving him all the way to the airport to get rid of him. On the way, he offered to sell us his extra can of peanuts, but my mom suggested that he might get hungry later, and that he had better hold onto them. What tact!
>I had a job programming Forth for a little company called "Computer Challenges", when I was in high school. I implemented my own Forth programming environment for the Apple ][ computer, and a graphics and animation package in 6502 assembly. Then I wrote an animated graphics demo with it, promoting Forth as a cross platform game programming language across Apple ][, C64, and BBC computers. (That was more than a few years before Java.)
>Enjoy the midterm elections, and keep up the performance for our amusement. Now do "Trump's not racist"! Then "Trump's not demented!" Then "Trump's not a rapist!" Then "Trump's not a pedophile!"
anal_reactor> You don't bother actually reading my point [...] please dump our conversation into ChatGPT and consult, I'm feeling like talking to a machine would be easier.
Oh, I've bothered reading your points, and I'll prove it to you. Begging for a chatbot to step into the argument is your final surrender, but why should I use ChatGPT, when you've already written so many sad words I can quote back to you, like from the thread about having an AI girlfriend/boyfriend instead of IRL friendships?
A reminder of your very own words, which I truly did read and analyze, without any AI assistance:
anal_reactor> I've been investing heavily into IRL friendships but I understood that the dream of having a deep connection with someone is just a mirage. I don't see myself getting into a relationship even though I desire it a lot because I don't really believe there is someone truly compatible with me.
anal_reactor> If I died today, I wouldn't even get a slack memo "we miss anal_reactor". Modern economy proved that humans are totally fungible. I have a dream that someone would take me on a date. But I understand it's just a silly fantasy. I spent last two years at work doing projects that went nowhere because my manager is deaf to feedback. What is that even supposed to mean? If I don't pay taxes I'll go to jail. I tried inviting a neighbor for a beer. Didn't work.
anal_reactor> Yes, I do have a hard time with in-person socialization, but that only reinforces the point that at least from my perspective, people suck.
anal_reactor> Once I've been to an interview where first they made us solve a problem in a group and then we had 1-1 interviews. After the group task the guy immediately asked me "Don't you have a feeling that you might've been forcing your opinions onto others?" to which I replied "Yes, I have.". Absolute fucking Chad I was.
anal_reactor> Once on 4chan I read an opinion about [...]
anal_reactor> I'm gay so I have easy access to sex and TBH I don't really have much sex, almost nothing at all, because sex with most people just isn't pleasant. I cannot derive pleasure from it if there's no connection, and "wow I love your car" isn't connection.
So why don't you tell us more about your sad lonely male incel problem, why no real humans want to talk to you, how all your relationships have been depressing failures instead of "deep connections" because you're in the MAGA cult, and why all your "dreams are a mirage" because you treat IRL friendships like transactional "investments". Then try to explain how "talking to a machine would be easier", and how well your AI boyfriend treats you.
Or you could take your own advice and paste this conversation into your AI boyfriend, and he will perform all of your deep emotional thinking and write your answer for you.
The adults in the room are having a serious discussion that you are no longer qualified to participate in, because you have degraded yourself into merely a pathological specimen of a MAGA cult member, generously providing evidence for the points I was making, but no longer a participant in a serious or intellectually honest conversation yourself.
By all means, please feel free to keep talking, because everything you say proves my point, but nobody has any reason to take anything you say seriously, by your own admission.
You're no more serious or coherent a person than Haley Stevens.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/11/01/politics/live-news/midter...
Patrick Stewart as Macbeth ("Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnaXDRwu84
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34129571
"Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress." – Scott McNealy
On the other hand, down the road at SGI there was a practice called "Skinnyhacking"!
https://rdtk.net/internet/how-do-you-check-a-computer-s-comp...
>Snowsinger. November 21, 2020 at 07:48.
>A truly excellent review of the history of Silicon Graphics. I worked in the Australian Sales office as their 1st engineer in the Asia Pacific region. Was trained in MtView the 1st week the MtView campus opened. The 1st system I worked on was the IRIS 1000 and subsequently all the products from then on till I left in mid-2009 when the Australian Engineering division was shut. A great company with great people who just wanted to engineer the best Graphics experience on the planet until we lost focus and vision of what we did well. Brings to Mind the Skinny Hackers, the Rocktain event, PCP monitoring, CXFS (Clustered File Systems), Failsafe, Diskless boot, Voxel vision, and so many other engineering wins. A great company, great people, & the drive to make a better computing world. Thank you for the memories and documenting the history of a company that did make some huge breakthroughs in Computer Graphics & Computing architecture. Just go ask NVIDIA, Cray and now HP!! Also a shout out to Jim Clark & his team for the vision and determination to bring the Graphics Engine to world, the heart of the IRIS workstation and subsequent graphics systems.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.sgi.misc/c/X50cCoYrU20/...
>Tom Davis, Mar 22, 1993, 6:06:21 PM, comp.sys.sgi.misc
>In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Dave Olson) writes:
|> In <[email protected]> [email protected] (Jason Heirtzler) writes:
|> | Okay, I gotta know. Whom does the phrase "The Skinny Hackers" refer to?
|> A small group of (fairly skinny ;) ) folks who are also great hackers/developers and mostly long time SGI employees. Among other fruits of their group hackerdom was the original showcase.
>Being skinny didn't have anything to do with it. Although Showcase was the best known product of the skinnyhackers, the first product was an image of them made from a photo of all three sitting naked at computer terminals, busily hacking. On top of the photo was the international "no" symbol (red circle with a line across it), and underneath, the words "No Skinnyhacking".
>Note: Skinnyhacking is a dangerous activity, and should only be performed by professionals. Do NOT attempt it at home.
>If you're interested, you can see the image in the most recent (1992) SIGGRAPH proceedings, in distored form on the back cover, and in non-distored form on page 252.
>I can't imagine that anyone would want a copy of this image, but I have one in SGI format. (Actually, the secret goal is to have this image overtake the mandrill in popularity.)
|> I won't speak further to protect their secret identities ;)
>I will! It was me! Tom Davis! The bald guy in the front! Oh, and the other two are Rocky Rhodes and Scott Carr. Ann Sydeman joined the group a short time later, but unfortunately missed the initial photo session (although there was a subsequent video ...). Paul Haeberli was the photographer.
[Fortunately I found a pdf of the paper with the image:]
"Fast Shadows and Lighting Effects Using Texture Mapping", by Mark Segal, Carl Korobkin, Rolf van Widenfelt, Jim Foran, Paul Haeberli, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. Computer Graphics, 26,2, July 1992, Page 252, Figure 3: Simulating a Slide Projector:
NSFSIGGRAPH:
The painful lesson you should have learned was that you're not capable of coherent logic, so you always lose arguments. Instead, you learned to easily lie through your teeth, and always tell people -- including yourself -- just what they want to hear. No woman in her right mind would want to be around somebody like you who worships and defends pedophiles, and that's good, because you pedophile defenders should not reproduce yourselves or ever be around other people's children. And that's why you'll always be alone, as long as you debase and humiliate yourself by worshiping and defending pedophiles like Trump.
Trump's reaction to Robby Roadsteamer singing "Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein’s plane" was priceless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNlfXAsa_T8
Enjoy the midterm elections, and keep up the performance for our amusement. Now do "Trump's not racist"! Then "Trump's not demented!" Then "Trump's not a pedophile rapist!"
Have you ever even used a PDP computer, or been in the same room as one, or even know anything at all about them?
You've totally failed to engage, and you've said absolutely nothing relevent, interesting, on topic, or cool at all. Do you have anything at all to contribute to this discussion besides rudely attempting to interrupt it, or are you just an obnoxious drive-by cowardly anonymous troll, afraid to even use your real name?
Why don't you post something relevant and interesting that actually contributes to the discussion, or if you're incapable of that, simply shut up and go away, instead of whining and trying to police public free speech that you have no interest in or understanding of, wasting everyone else's time, and making a complete ass of yourself, the exact opposite of doing a "cool thing".
anonymous908213> Indeed I would go so far as to say posting it publicly has negative value, because everyone is posting their million lines of free open source slop per day, making it exceedingly difficult to find the interesting code that people are still putting effort into.
I don't have to go far to objectively say that goes double for you. Everything you've posted to this discussion -- and many others -- has intentionally negative value, of interest to no one, because everything you've said is just whiny derogatory low-effort factually incorrect human slop, making it exceedingly difficult to find the interesting words that other people are still putting effort into.
https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/tk_bisque
The Tk command tk_bisque, documented in http://www.purl.org/tcl/home/man/tcl8.5/TkCmd/palette.htm is implemented in the Tk library file palette.tcl.
https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/bisque
"X11 bisque - also known as 'Ousterhout beige' - was for a long time the default color of Tk GUI's."
The "bisque is beautiful" slogan first appeared on a T-shirt [L1 ] in 1995.
Did AI or any other PDP-10s have a 340 display, and did LLOGO use that, or a raster framebuffer? What versions of LOGO does SIMH run, and is PDP-11 LOGO recovered and running?
I found a recently written Forth for the PDP-10 called "TENTH" (Ha ha! I suppose that means we should call Mitch Bradley's PDP-7 FORTH "SEVENTH"!), and I remember GREN (Ian Mackey) wrote his own PDP-10 FORTH on ITS as well as lots of other cool hacks in MIDAS. Do you know if anything from his home directory was recovered from backups?
https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/humor/...
Date: Wednesday, 20 August 1986 03:42-EDT
From: Mark Crispin <MRC%[email protected]>
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Re: DEC's PDP's
Postal-Address: 1802 Hackett Ave.; Mountain View, CA 94043-4431
Phone: +1 (415) 968-1052
The PDP-1 was an 18 bit machine. It was DEC's first computer, and some of the first timesharing systems were designed for it. It's also unique in being one's complement; all later DEC computers were two's complement. Some machines, such as one of MIT's PDP-1s, were in operation until the late '70s.
The PDP-2 was a designation reserved for a 24 bit machine, but as far as I can tell it was never even designed and definitely none were ever built.
The PDP-3 was a 36 bit machine that was designed but never built by DEC. However, Scientific Engineering Institute built one in 1960.
The PDP-4 was an 18 bit machine that was intended to be a cheaper, slower alternative to the PDP-1. It was so slow that it didn't sell well, although it was interesting for its auto-incrementing memory registers. It was not program-compatible with the PDP-1, but its instruction set was the basis of DEC's future 18 bit computers.
The PDP-5 was a 12 bit machine designed to be a small laboratory system. It used many of the ideas in the LINC (Laboratory Instruction Computer, designed by Lincoln Labs at MIT, some of which were built by DEC).
The PDP-6 was a 36 bit machine and the first machine to implement the most wonderful computer architecture known to man. It was rather expensive and difficult to maintain, and not many were sold. As a result, DEC cancelled 36 bit computers for what was to be the first of many times.
The PDP-7 was an 18 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-4. It was a major price/performance win over the PDP-4 and the first DEC computer to use wire-wrapping.
The PDP-8 was a 12 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-8. It basically defined the term "minicomputer", and went through several incarnations. The original PDP-8 was followed by the extremely slow PDP-8/S (as bad as the PDP-4 was to the PDP-1, but at least the /S was program-compatible). DEC recouped with the PDP-8/I (using MSI integrated circuits) and the smaller PDP-8/L, and somewhat later came out with the "Omnibus 8" machines -- the PDP-8/E, the PDP-8/F (a half-sized version of the PDP-8/E), the PDP-8/M (an OEM version of the PDP-8/F), and the final machine, the single board PDP-8/A. The PDP-8/A still exists after a fashion as a current DEC product.
The PDP-9 was an 18 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-7. It had a faster memory than the PDP-7 and was the first microprogrammed DEC computer. Modulo a 300 wire(!) ECO required in the first machines, the PDP-9 was a reliable machine and some are still in operation today. There was a short-lived PDP-9/L.
The PDP-10 was a 36 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-6. It is especially noted for its software, which represents the pinnacle of DEC software engineering and has never been equalled. The first KA10, largely installed in universities, created a whole generation of timesharing hackers. The follow-on KI10, with paging and using IC's instead of discrete components but otherwise unexciting, mostly was sold to commercial organizations. The KL10 went through several incarnations and is today the most representative of this marvelous machine. The KS10 was a small, low-speed (approximately KA10 performance) processor which was DEC's last successful implementation of this architecture.
The PDP-11 was a 16-bit machine that went through more implementations and operating systems than can be counted. Presently it superceded the less powerful PDP-8 as the representative minicomputer. While the PDP-11 used octal, it was in its deep heart of hearts a hexidecimal machine, and the first indicator of the creeping IBMification of DEC that took full fruit in the VAX. [I can hear the flames now...] Rather than fight it the customers loved it; more PDP-11's have been sold than any other DEC computer (possibly more than all the others combined).
The PDP-12 was a 12 bit machine and the sucessor to the PDP-8. It combined a LINC and a PDP-8 type processor in the same box and basically was a new model of the LINC-8 which was the same thing.
No PDP-13 was ever designed or built. Even DEC gets superstitious.
The PDP-14 was a 12 bit machine with a 1 bit register. It was used as a process control engine in applications that were felt to be too rugged for a PDP-8, and basically replaced a set of relays. Later DEC made PDP-8's suitable for this sort of thing, but it didn't stop them from the ultimate silliness of building a PDP-14 that used a PDP-8 as its console processor!
The PDP-15 was an 18 bit machine and the final one of this design built by DEC. More PDP-15's were built and sold than any of the others, and it went through several incarnations including some which used a PDP-11 as a front end. Apparently the cancellation of the PDP-15 came as a great surprise to the "Tiger Team" who worked on it, although considering its general ungainliness compared to comparable performance PDP-11's it wasn't surprising. In many ways the PDP-15 died for the same reason the PDP-10 did.
The PDP-16 was a "roll your own" 16 bit machine based on various "building blocks". Every PDP-16 was essentially custom-designed by the customer. It got a fair amount of attention when it was announced but evidentally didn't sell very well.
There was no PDP-17 or any other designator. DEC apparently decided that "PDP" had a perjorative ring to it.
----
Also from the humor directory, you might also enjoy singing along with "Alice's PDP-10":
https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/humor/...
----
DEC Mail from Ken Olsen to Gordon Bell, Dick Clayton, Jack Shields, and Jack Smith, 18 November 1980. A real memo. The 11/23 is the machine Crispin, above, says replaced the PDP-8, and Olsen has just had one delivered. Four dual boards, in a steel box, and he says the integrated circuits were a waste:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/humor/...
The printer is the size of an IBM typewriter and arrived in a crate five feet tall that would not go through the doors of his house. The two RX02s fill about a third of their cabinet, and the rest is air. DEC made smaller floppies because the box was so big. He says anyone paying attention would have made the box fit the floppies. Every screw has its own washer and its own lock washer, and he lost one inside the machine. He wants the names: who designed it, who packaged it, who approved it for manufacturing, who approved it for field service. Bell had been saying the Japanese were coming on financing and manufacturing. Olsen says they are going to kill DEC by better design.
https://cars-int.org/editorial-board/
I found the reference to his 1969 PIXIE paper, which describes his radial menus, in December 1986. His pioneering work inspired me over many decades to publish papers, free open source code, and develop pie menus for X10, NeWS, X11, TCL/Tk, ActiveX, JavaScript, SimCity, and The Sims.
I have been actively tracking down his PIXIE papers, the films, and the listing since May 2008, to tell his story and give him credit while he is still alive and active, and to see and feel first hand how his radial menus worked with a light pen.
I asked Cambridge University Library to help me find the films. David Chapman tracked them down, had them digitized, and the library published them in July 2019, and I made a music video from them in March 2020. I asked Heinz if he had any code listings or other resources. He had kept the listing, and sent me the scan in July 2026.
Please explain and justify which specific objections you have to using AI to OCR and correct the scans of handwritten notes and 128 pages of line printer listings, and implementing an emulator that runs that code in a web browser? Can you suggest a better approach, please?
It simply would not have been possible to do in this time frame at such a low cost without AI, which only just recently enabled a quest I've been on for 40 years since 1986.
I am doing it all on my own time, paying for it all out of my own pocket, while Heinz is still around to help by sending scans of his listings, papers and handwritten notes, generously answering my questions, and patiently explaining the history and details of his work.
PIXIE System Analysis -- Heinz Lemke's handwritten scanned notes and AI assisted transcript:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/tree/main...
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
How do you suggest I should have done anything differently? Are you volunteering your own time to help out with this project without using AI?
If you want to do cool things without AI, I could certainly use your help manually proofreading the transcript of his handwritten notes, carefully looking at these 128 scanned pages of line printer listings from 1972, meticulously cross checking the octal machine code against the PDP-7 assembly language source, and thoroughly testing and debugging the code in the emulator, or on a real PDP-7 if you are lucky enough to have access to one. The scans, the assembly, and the octal are all here:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/tree/main...
The version the browser emulator runs is here:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/tree/main...
Please submit PRs for any errors you find, and I will appreciate and credit your constructive criticism and contributions more than your banal unhelpful low-effort drive-by knee-jerk anti-ai trolling.
Or do you believe I just should not have done any of this research and work at all, nor published it as free open source code for other people and museums to use, nor shared it on Hacker News?
Doug Humphrey's nickname was DIGEX, and he had a PDP-10 in his living room in Westchester Tower Apartments that he acquired from a loading dock at the University of Maryland. It was challenging to haul up in the elevator! It had two power cords, and two of us had to plug them in at the same time, into outlets on different circuits, so it got both hot legs.
He started one of the first ISPs by that name, which was later acquired by Worldcom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digex
The Digex Video! - Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsgROO4MIvc
DEF CON 12 - Doug Mohney, DIGEX At the Dawn of the Commercial Internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMq-x9rlJM
The article also didn't mention the PDP-15, which was the fifth and last 18 bit DEC machine of the PDP-1 => 4 => 7 => 9 => 15 lineage.
It also boots PDP-7 UNIX, the one this article is about. Log in as ken, password ken:
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/unix/
Same cabinet runs DECUS DUEL (the spacewar), DEC's light pen test, a lunar lander, and guess-the-number, besides PIXIE and the Forth below.
Here's a music video I cut from the 1969 films of that system running on the PDP-7 and Titan at Cambridge. PIXIE has the first known radial menus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDrqR9XssJI
Cambridge librarian David Chapman digitized the uncut films from the Cambridge University Library:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9R63T2xGCA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCrl5QmQ9aA
The listing the emulator runs was assembled 12 February 1972. I wanted to look and feel first hand how the radial menus work, so here's that code running in the browser:
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/symelec/
Here's the PDP-7 assembly source code I recovered. The page runs the image it assembles to:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
I asked Mitch Bradley, who is the Forth guru who wrote OpenFirmware, if there was a Forth system for the PDP-7, so in one day he and Claude created one, including a Turtle Graphics library for the Type 340 vector graphics display! It turns out that the PDP-7 instruction set is perfect for Forth, and its inner interpreter loop is only three instructions.
Mitch Bradley's PDP-7 Forth:
https://github.com/MitchBradley/pdp7forth
How Mitch's Forth works, and my enhancements (full names, CREATE DOES>, PIXIE rings):
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Video demo of PIXIE and FORTH on the PDP-7 Cabinet Emulator with the Type 340 Vector Graphics Display:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo8kdY-5i6c
It's easy to make virtual real and fictional PDP-7 devices that, like the actual Type 340 vector graphics display, plug in custom IOT instructions and even perform DMA, like a Turing Machine co-processor, the Ultimate Machine (Minsky's design, which Claude Shannon built, that just turns itself off), and a Data Hand (like VPL's Data Glove) that tracks your hand with the webcam:
Turing Machine (adds IOT instructions and uses DMA to run TM programs out of 18 bit core memory, which it animates with Forth turtle graphics and Type 340 display character generator):
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/turing/
Forth Turing Machine driver and renderer:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Ultimate Machine (adds IOT instructions to control and monitor device that turns itself off, and animate it with Forth turtle graphics):
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/ultimate/
Forth Ultimate Machine driver and renderer:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Minsky and Shannon's Ultimate Machine (sometimes called Useless, but Marvin considered it Ultimately useful):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_machine
Data Hand (adds IOT instructions to read hand position, orientation, and pose, and draws hand with Forth turtle graphics):
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/hand/
Forth Data Hand driver and renderer:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
Ultimate Machine + Data Hand = Ultimate Hand (combines the above devices into an interactive Ultimate Machine that lets you turn it off with your own hand, animated with Forth turtle graphics):
https://hyperties.org/cabinet/ultimate-hand/
Forth Ultimate Hand demo putting it all together:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
The Type 340 was a real PDP-7 device. Shannon's box was a real box, and the DataGlove was a real glove, but neither was a PDP-7 peripheral. These are virtual devices that plug in the way a real one did: their own IOT instructions, and DMA.
Here's the manifesto about the emulator design:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
>We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. The machine in the page is ours, all of it at once: every register, every word of core, every device, and the host around them. Nothing here is a black box we have to squint at through a keyhole. So when something would be better, we make it better, from whichever side is closest. The 1960s machine stays honest. Everything around it is ours to invent.
Cabinet Design:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
>The rule throughout: instance first. Hardwire what SYMELEC needs, comment where the abstraction would go, generate it lazily when a second instance demands it. Work backwards from the software you want to run.
Cabinet README:
https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood/blob/main...
>An emulator: a stand-in for a cabinet, so the original program can run. PDP-7 is the first plug-in instruction set, for PIXIE. Type 340 on a canvas, light pen as a hit-test.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/eaqgk/java_is_...
"XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using enough of it." -Chris Maden
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1mbgih/xml...
"XML is a giant step in no direction at all" -Erik Naggum
https://quotefancy.com/quote/1643080/Erik-Naggum-XML-is-a-gi...
2004 - The Big Bang (Flickr) - Co-founder Caterina Fake wants to buy Flicker.com, but an offline beer brewer refuses to sell it. Out of options, she suggests dropping the "e". It works, and Flickr is born, instantly setting a precedent that typos equal modernism.
2005–2006 - The YC Copycat Flood - Paul Graham launches Y Combinator, and the application form might as well have had a checkbox for "did you delete a vowel to look disruptive?" Scribd (YC S06) drops the E because buying a real dictionary noun requires actual revenue. Twitpic and Pixlr emerge to capture that sweet, sweet pre-seed funding. Even Twitter originally launches in 2006 as "Twttr" because the actual domain is owned by a bird enthusiast. (They buy the "e" back six months later once they realize they look ridiculous).
2007 - The Peak of Style - Tumblr launches, proving the vowel-less trend isn't a passing fad but the official language of the new internet. Dropping the "e" becomes shorthand for "we have venture capital, a minimalist mobile interface, and absolutely no monetization strategy."
2009 - The Aggressive Pivot - Grindr launches. The convention branches out of pure utility and enters cultural lifestyle apps, cementing "-r" as the universal suffix for a location-based mobile service. Every YC batch now features at least three "Uber for X" startups named after a mangled verb.
2011–2012 - The Saturation Point - Companies like Blendr and Fiverr continue the trend, but the public begins to push back. Every SaaS tool on Hacker News looks like a typo. Critics and users start pointing out how incredibly annoying it is to vocally explain a business name ("It's called Taskr... no, without the E").
2015–2018 - The Death Kneel & Corrections - The joke gets old. Brand consultants begin labeling creative misspelling a "cardinal sin". Startups realize they are losing millions of organic visitors to the properly-spelled domains owned by domain squatters. The internet enters the "-ify" (Spotify, Shopify) and "-ly" (Bitly) eras, completely abandoning the broken suffix because pg wrote an essay saying missing vowels hurt your SEO.
2019–Present - The "Adult in the Room" Era - The trend is officially dead. Modern YC startups pivot toward ultra-literal names (The Browser Company) or aggressive, serious abstract words (OpenAI, CoreWeave) to pretend they are enterprise-ready AI infrastructure rather than a wrapper wrapper wrapper.
Postscript - The Ultimate Regression - The convention reaches its absolute, braindead rock bottom with Elon Musk. After burning 44 billion dollars to buy Twitter just so he could unban literal Nazis and amplify white supremacist conspiracy theories to the front page, he rebranded the entire platform to "X.com". It turns out "X" is just "Ex" without the penultimate "e" -- a fittingly hollow, single-letter monument to a sociopathic tech bro who couldn't innovate a functional name if his taxpayer subsidies depended on it.