A list of major ITS attractions.

doc/attactions.md

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+# ITS Attractions
+
+**Maclisp** — historical Lisp for ITS and Multics, and the base
+for a family of dialects that consolidated as the Common Lisp standard.
+It was used to bootstrap **Scheme**.
+
+**SHRDLU** — infamous natural language input and block stacking
+robot simulation, written in Maclisp.
+
+**Lisp machines** — were bootstrapped from ITS and Maclisp.
+
+**C compiler** — written by Alan Snyder; possibly the first
+created outside Bell Labs.
+
+**Macsyma** — symbolic manipulation program that was written in
+Maclisp and made available to researchers on the Arpanet.  Macsyma was
+so important a dedicated PDP-10 was purchased for it, not just once,
+but twice.
+
+**Emacs** — was developed on ITS as a set of **TECO** macros.
+
+**The Magic Switch** — a piece of hacker lore chronicled in Guy
+Steele's book *Hacker's Dictionary*.  The book comes from the
+**JARGON** file.
+
+**Logo** — educational programming language began at BBN but
+greatly enhanced at MIT.  ITS hosts many versions for the PDP-10,
+PDP-11, Apple II, etc.  A **Small ITS** timesharing system was written
+to run Logo on a PDP-11/45.  Marvin Minsky designed the **2500**, a
+dual text and vector display minicomputer for running Logo.
+
+**CLU** — a programming language by Barbara Liskov that
+introduced abstract data types way ahead of its times.  The CLU group
+developed the first version of the X Window System.
+
+**Zork** — was written in **MDL**/**Muddle**, the major
+programming language on the Dynamic Modeling PDP-10.  Zork was
+inspired by (**Colossal Cave**) **Advent**ure, which is also available
+on ITS.  Together, the two games were instrumental in kicking off text
+adventure games and interactive fiction.
+
+**Maze** — 3D game, and possibly the first first-person shooter.
+
+**MacHack VI** — Greenblatt's chess program was the first
+computer program to play chess in human tournament competitions and be
+granted a chess rating.
+
+**Spacewar** — one of the first video games.  First developed on
+a PDP-1 at MIT.  ITS has a much updated PDP-6 version, and consoles
+made by **HAKMEM** author Mike Beeler.