[HN Gopher] Notes from a 1984 trip to Xerox PARC (2019)
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Notes from a 1984 trip to Xerox PARC (2019)
Author : signa11
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-09-05 04:47 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (commandcenter.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (commandcenter.blogspot.com)
| gumby wrote:
| I was working at PARC when Pike was apparently there and his
| description of the infrastructure isn't really correct.
|
| There were a mix of D machines, not just Dorados (which were ECL
| machines that needed machine room cooling, as well as the earlier
| generation Dolphin machines, both using the patch panel setup he
| described. Also Dandelions (sold as the Xerox Star) and a few
| Altos. The D machines could be booted into any of the three
| primary environments (Interlisp, Smalltalk, or Cedar/Mesa). I
| never touched a disk pack (did the Dorados even have them? I
| think the Dolphins did. The Dandelions had 8 inch floppies -- I
| still have a set with some custom microcode I wrote)
|
| We had a distributed network mail system (grapevine), distributed
| networked filesystem you mounted directly,etc. The way he
| describes editing a document it sounded like he was either using
| an Alto or booted one of these machines in Alto mode.
|
| No terminal rooms? Well yes, this was personal computing, not
| timesharing.
|
| The speed issues he described suggest he wasn't using a dorado.
| My job used Interlisp-D but I did boot into Smalltalk and Cedar
| sometimes to check them out. The dolphins in particular were
| particularly underpowered.
|
| It's often hard to evaluate something on its own terms rather
| than on the terms you are used to.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > No terminal rooms? Well yes, this was personal computing, not
| timesharing.
|
| It seems that as late as 2012, he still thought personal
| computing was a bad idea.
| https://usesthis.com/interviews/rob.pike/ (see the "dream
| setup" section)
| MisterTea wrote:
| What Rob wants is a personal computing environment that isn't
| restricted to a singular personal computer. I use plan 9 and
| the concept of your ENTIRE computing environment being
| portable across any number of machines, at the OS level, is
| priceless.
| gumby wrote:
| Which was actually the computing environment of the early
| 1980s, at places like PARC, MIT (Athena), CMU (don't
| remember the name of their system) as well as commercial
| systems like Apollo. None of which he ever mentions when
| touting Plan 9.
|
| After 15 years of computing I was shocked when I realized
| that Sun machines kept all their data locally, ran sendmail
| etc. It seemed like such a huge step backwards in time.
| ThomasBHickey wrote:
| Our research group used Apollo's for several years and
| the feeling that they were all one big system (which
| never failed) was wonderful. Not being pure Unix was the
| main drawback.
| rjsw wrote:
| > CMU (don't remember the name of their system)
|
| Andrew [1], not sure it was usable in 1984 though.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Project
| pacman2 wrote:
| Would you be so kind to elaborate on this? "I use plan 9"
|
| You use it for your daily work? Is this possible?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| A famous (very) quote about the Alto was:
| *The nice thing about the Alto is that it doesn't run any
| faster at night*
|
| This was when timesharing machines were super-slow during the
| day, so if you wanted decent response time, you had to come
| in at night. The more things change...
| IncRnd wrote:
| Well, that's not actually what he wrote. You might want to
| read that section again. He said his dream setup is simpler
| than carrying three computers, cameras, an ipod, and other
| oddments. What's wrong with that?
| spijdar wrote:
| To achieve that end, he essentially says he wants all his
| resources somewhere else (hosted by a third party who does
| the hard work of keeping it online and backed up, etc) and
| to interact with those resources through a uniform
| interface via thin-clients that only use local storage and
| processing power as a cache.
|
| If you still owned all the hardware in this picture, you
| could argue it's still "personal computing", but once
| you've offloaded the processing and storage to a third
| party, it's more "timesharing on a mainframe" than
| "personal computer".
|
| There are _many_ advantages to this approach, but it does
| mean giving up something.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _Notes from a 1984 trip to Xerox PARC_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18989430 - Jan 2019 (18
| comments)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I left Xerox May 1983 (from SDD, not PARC), and never had a
| Dorado (they were reputed to be so big and hot that you didn't
| want one in your office). You can read what it was like, with
| hindsight NEVER allowed to the characters, in my book [1].
|
| This is a remarkably detailed critique of one very specific
| subset of the world of PARC 1984. People in the rest of PARC, and
| in SDD, were using Cedar, Tajo, and the Mesa Development
| Environment, not Smalltalk, and _not_ on Dorados, which added up
| to a much, much different experience than Rob describes.
|
| His last paragraph begins "A few years ago, PARC probably had
| most of the good ideas. But I don't think they ran far enough
| with them, and they didn't take in enough new ones." is spot on.
|
| There was some point, well before 1984, where Xerox should have
| recognized that the rest of the world had not been standing
| still. Expect a series of posts soon where hindsight IS allowed
| and we look at what Xerox _should_ have done.
|
| [1] https://www.albertcory.io
| christkv wrote:
| Just ordered your book not been so excited to read computer
| history book since the folklore book about the Macintosh. Thank
| you for taking the time to document such a pivotal moment.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Thank YOU. I hope you don't expect it to be nothing but
| computer history! There are characters in there who don't
| spend _every_ waking minute thinking about work.
| mulmen wrote:
| Your book has been on my wish list for a while, I just placed
| the order. This is a romanticized period of technological
| development. I was born a year after you left Xerox. In a lot
| of ways 2021 is my 1983. I look forward to the hindsight in
| your upcoming posts.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Thank you, I hope you enjoy it.
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