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The Lisperati1000 is a cyberdeck terminal dedicated to Lisp programming

171 points| benwen | 4 years ago |hackster.io | reply

86 comments

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[+] drcode|4 years ago|reply
Hi, I'm with Lisperati and we're working hard to manufacture these. Feel free to ask any questions. No, we don't know when they'll be ready, but when they are ready we will sell them directly (no presale/crowdfunding/etc)

Also: we already have DIY build instructions with STL files available at lisperaticomputers.com. However, the official device will have an aluminum enclosure.

[+] nanna|4 years ago|reply
> we're working hard to manufacture these.

Really exciting!

Assumedly it's Linux under the hood, and you'd be able to install whatever packages normally available through, say apt? So this could this be used for writing LaTeX, for example?

Also and tangentially, has there been any progress with Walking Dream?

http://walkingdre.am/

[+] Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago|reply
Is the 8.8" ultrawide display from Waveshare? I'm seeing it becoming a standard with cyberdecks nowadays[1] but how is the longevity of the display?

All the best with Lisperati!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/

[+] 7thaccount|4 years ago|reply
I'm thinking of purchasing one. Is it essentially just Linux with Lisp packages setup on top, or running some custom lisp OS on top of whatever is running on the pi?
[+] 1MachineElf|4 years ago|reply
Would I be able to put a Planck (instead of the Vortex Core) into the aluminum enclosure version?
[+] ashton314|4 years ago|reply
Tell me more about the keyboard: can I reprogram it if I want? Looks mechanical; can I pick/replace my key switches? Is it running the QMK firmware?

I would have killed to have one of these things in high school. A broken Lisp on a TI-84 just doesn’t cut it…

[+] facorreia|4 years ago|reply
What's the value proposition over a more general-purpose portable computer like a MacBook Air?
[+] kratom_sandwich|4 years ago|reply
What's with the recent wave of portable terminals? Has any of these made it ever into the hands of customers? I believe the only device that actually came out is the Cosmo Communicator (https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/cosmo-communicator)

There's also

Devterm - https://www.clockworkpi.com/devterm

Popcorn Pocket - https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/

Teenyserv - https://expanscape.com/teenyserv/the-teenyserv-prototypes/

[+] daniellarusso|4 years ago|reply
Cyberdecks have been popular for at least a year or so, but, yes, not sure why this one in particular made it to the frontpage.

Hackaday has quite a bit of cyberdeck projects on their blog, here:

https://hackaday.com/tag/cyberdeck/

I am guessing part of the appeal is having a portable device with a QWERTY tactile keyboard that does not have a locked-down OS.

Also, it is much easier to replace a damaged screen when compared to an iPad.

[+] throwaway316943|4 years ago|reply
It seems to be a collision of custom keyboards, cheap and capable SoCs, easy access to displays and driver boards and a dose of nostalgia and tech weariness.

I like this one but I’d suffer it to be a bit larger to accommodate a standard keyboard and a pi4. I love the display, seems like you can buy them on Amazon and elsewhere since they are targeted at case modders and the like.

[+] daniellarusso|4 years ago|reply
The Gemini PDA from your planetcom link looks interesting.
[+] lallysingh|4 years ago|reply
I don't see where the parens are on the keyboard. No number row. Is it another shift/fn level down?
[+] dTal|4 years ago|reply
Fn + K/L

I think it's a strange choice not to have them be first class, unshifted characters - and yet have such a dizzying array of modifier keys.

[+] ynniv|4 years ago|reply
I bet Shift plus one of the two sides of that spacebar would do nicely.
[+] valyagolev|4 years ago|reply
perhaps the idea is to use paredit that mostly manages them for you
[+] dkersten|4 years ago|reply
> Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages that is still in use today

I don’t like that this keeps getting repeated. Common Lisp is different from the original Lisp and other modern Lisps are even more different. It’s like saying Algol is one of the oldest programming languages still in use today, because many Algol-descendants are quite popular still.

[+] lispm|4 years ago|reply
Common Lisp may be expanded, but it still has the core of early Lisp, and its ancestors trace back to it: ZetaLisp, Maclisp, Lisp 1.5, Lisp 1.

It still has the old operators: car, cdr, cons, eval, apply, append, cond, quote, lambda, set, setq, atom, and, eq, equal, list, map, mapcon, maplist, nconc, not, null, or, print, prog, read, remprop, rplaca, rplacd, ...

It has the old data structures like symbols and cons cells.

Thus programs from 1960 often can be made running in Common Lisp, unless they make use of system specific functions.

[+] snemvalts|4 years ago|reply
I don't understand how any neck holds up to sustained use of devices with this screen placement.
[+] drcode|4 years ago|reply
This is a common concern with this form factor, but I think there's a lot of variability between people on how comfortable they are with a "book reading" posture, such as required by a cyberdeck. It will work for some people, not so much for other people.
[+] gorgoiler|4 years ago|reply
What are the best cyberdecks I can buy right now?

I love the idea of a good keyboard + xterm + browser. A lot.

[+] jmrm|4 years ago|reply
I really don't like the keyboard, but at least it's always nice to see a brand new LISP machine :-)
[+] vessenes|4 years ago|reply
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.

Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

[+] sunsipples|4 years ago|reply
I have no use for this but want one.

is that it's purpose?

[+] rowland66|4 years ago|reply
From the article:

> But if you need some complex algorithms — particularly algorithms that do a lot of heavy mathematical lifting — then Lisp is the ideal choice.

Is this right? I never thought of LISP as good fit for numerical processing.

[+] lispm|4 years ago|reply
It may not be the fastest, but something like Common Lisp has extensive numeric capabilities built-in like computing with floats, bignums, complex, ratios, ... Extensive mathematical software has been written in Lisp like Reduce (written in Standard Lisp), Macsyma, Axiom, ... In education for a while something like Derive, MuSimp/MuMath, ... was used. Derive should also have been used in pocket calculators, which would be in the spirit of Lisperati1000.
[+] bitwize|4 years ago|reply
If you stick to floats and arrays of floats, Fortran is probably still faster.

But Common Lisp and fully conformant Schemes have an extensive numeric tower including arbitrary precision integers, rationals, and complex numbers built in, making Lisp useful for some kinds of numeric computing that would be cumbersome even in Fortran.

Plus, I once heard of a guy who wrote an FFT implementation in Gambit Scheme that beat FFTW in speed...

[+] vincent-manis|4 years ago|reply
Somebody (Guy Steele?) once did a benchmark of Maclisp and the DEC PDP-10 Fortran compiler on numerical problems. As I recall Maclisp came out ahead.
[+] sedachv|4 years ago|reply
Common Lisp is the best calculator because it handles rational and complex numbers, and transcendental functions over them, correctly.
[+] olodus|4 years ago|reply
Lisp was the favored language for programming AI back in the day. Though the kind of AI problems focused on then was much more symbolic-themed than numerical themed as they are now. Lisp is highly regarded when solving complex problems, though would probably not get hailed as the fastest language.
[+] neallindsay|4 years ago|reply
Not the point of the article, but I literally laughed out loud when I read the first line: "There are dozens of programming languages out there..."
[+] na85|4 years ago|reply
You know for a dedicated lisp machine, I'm surprised to see it doesn't have ( and ) accessible without using a modifier key.
[+] Slackwise|4 years ago|reply
If this were a 60% board instead that could fold the display over to cover the keys for transportation, this would be an instant sell for me.
[+] blue1|4 years ago|reply
what exactly is a cyberdeck (outside of Neuromancer)?
[+] numpad0|4 years ago|reply
A growing trend of Neuromancer-inspired, utilitarian-looking, retro-themed, console-focused, low-volume or one-off art projects.
[+] lmohseni|4 years ago|reply
It’s a custom built quasi portable computer, sometimes based on a ras pi or other cheap and small dev board. Check out old.reddit.com/r/cyberdeck!
[+] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
I have a feeling that the Casio post not long ago motivated this submission. Or maybe it's the Zeitgeist
[+] grae_QED|4 years ago|reply
Wow, I remember commenting on the original r/cyberdeck post three months ago. Pretty wild that it's on hacker news now.