Things I learned from reading “Dealers of Lightning”

I've read and enjoyed Dealers of Lightning. However, I feel compelled to note that Alan Kay did an AMA here in 2016 [1], and said [2]:

"Dealers of Lightning" is not the best book to read (try Mitchell Waldrop's "The Dream Machine").

I've not yet read Waldrop's book. It's on my to-read shelf.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940756

"The second round of Alto 3, with a plan to manufacture entirely from commercial components, was canned in favor of the Xerox Star – a scope-crept project which included an OS and hardware, later only the OS with matching hardware."

The Star was essentially the Dandelion which was PARC's own affordable successor to the Alto - a similar soft machine but implemented with then-commodity AMD2900 bit-slice. As far as I know, the Altos were all manufactured entirely from commercial components (7400 TTL mostly). To really commercialize would require a formal PCB design rather than wirewrap and perhaps a more designed enclosure.