Because Computing Doesn't Have to Suck.
Conceptual elegance, simplicity, and hackability are not inevitable casualties of progress.
Goals include full reflectivity, introspection, orthogonal persistence (single address space), and full utilization of the new X86-64 architecture's capabilities.
Most (and eventually all) of Loper will be (re)developed from within Loper.
Yet another attempt at Lisp Machine resurrection?
Much more than that.
A central purpose of the project is to shed certain absurdities that computer users have been putting up with for so long that they are now seen as inevitable: file systems; the distinction between code and data; multiple address spaces; (including the disk/RAM dichotomy) the storage of source code as raw ASCII text; and, last but not least, the "compile/pray/debug" cycle.
In the list of goals, playing nice with legacy-anything is dead last. Let's find out what a clean break with the past quarter-century could get us.
There will be very little detailed talk of planned features because there remains a very, very long way to go. Talk is cheap.
Caveat:
Please don't expect to find a working operating system here any time soon! Save yourself the disappointment of clicking the svn view link! If this message ever goes away, begin to be excited.
Reading List for the Excited, Disgusted, or the Merely Curious:
Why Lisp matters.
Why Lisp Machines were and remain important.
Rob Pike: Why Systems Software Research has become Irrelevant.
Alan Kay: The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet (video)
