It was not just the hardware, or the software, or the culture, or the interesting problems you could solve, or the zeitgeist of that time in history, but a rich combination of all those things and more, that is so hard to capture, describe or reproduce -- or even believe, if you haven't experienced it first hand.
Those giant keyboards, with all their wide special purpose buttons topped with hieroglyphic keycap labels, in combination with the huge screen, three button mouse, and of course all the great software turning on and off the little dots on the screen that you could dive into, explore and modify at will, the printed and online documentation, the networked developer support community, all carefully designed to work together seamlessly regardless of cost, gave you the feeling of being in control of a very heavy, expensive, well built, solid, powerful, luxury automobile, with rich Corinthian leather seats, a high fidelity sound system, cruise and climate control, power steering, windows and seats, a full tank of gas and an empty ashtray, a glove compartment stuffed with AAA maps, about to embark on a long and adventurous journey exploring far away places you've never visited before.
It's hard to capture that kind of multi-sensory ergonometric computational Fahrvergnügen, just running it in an emulator on a MacBook Pro. (As luxurious and well designed as the MBP is, it can't hold a candle to a Lisp Machine.)
Sitting down in front of one of those monsters with a big mug of coffee, an interesting task to work on, a rack of my favorite music on cassette tapes, many hours of free time to hack in the privacy of an air conditioned lab in front of me, and a bean bag chair for naps when I pass out from exhaustion behind me, will always be one of my cherished memories.
Ricardo Montalban couldn't have expressed the luxurious feeling of power and control more eloquently: "I have much more in this small Chrysler than great comfort at a most pleasant price. I have great confidence, for which there can be no price. In Cordova, I have what I need."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc
Those giant keyboards, with all their wide special purpose buttons topped with hieroglyphic keycap labels, in combination with the huge screen, three button mouse, and of course all the great software turning on and off the little dots on the screen that you could dive into, explore and modify at will, the printed and online documentation, the networked developer support community, all carefully designed to work together seamlessly regardless of cost, gave you the feeling of being in control of a very heavy, expensive, well built, solid, powerful, luxury automobile, with rich Corinthian leather seats, a high fidelity sound system, cruise and climate control, power steering, windows and seats, a full tank of gas and an empty ashtray, a glove compartment stuffed with AAA maps, about to embark on a long and adventurous journey exploring far away places you've never visited before.
It's hard to capture that kind of multi-sensory ergonometric computational Fahrvergnügen, just running it in an emulator on a MacBook Pro. (As luxurious and well designed as the MBP is, it can't hold a candle to a Lisp Machine.)
Sitting down in front of one of those monsters with a big mug of coffee, an interesting task to work on, a rack of my favorite music on cassette tapes, many hours of free time to hack in the privacy of an air conditioned lab in front of me, and a bean bag chair for naps when I pass out from exhaustion behind me, will always be one of my cherished memories.
Ricardo Montalban couldn't have expressed the luxurious feeling of power and control more eloquently: "I have much more in this small Chrysler than great comfort at a most pleasant price. I have great confidence, for which there can be no price. In Cordova, I have what I need." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc