3 ms·

>The ideas are quite old, much older than Bret Victor's work. Absolutely. Your work in particular predates Bret's and I've enjoyed reading it and hope it catch

by Permit 11y ago

>The ideas are quite old, much older than Bret Victor's work. Absolutely. Your work in particular predates Bret's and I've enjoyed reading it and hope it catches on and inspires more folks at Microsoft and Microsoft Research! :) I think what makes Bret's work a little different than the linked work is that Bret's work managed to escape academia and appeal to an audience that might not have otherwise been exposed to these ideas in the first place.

pjmlp 11y ago
It is great that Bret's work made the ideas more mainstream, but on my research for Xerox PARC's work I would say the ideas go back at very least to the interactive coding available on Smalltalk, Interlisp-D and Mesa/Cedar. Interactive coding is with us since the early 80's, the ideas just failed to go mainstream.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Live programming goes way beyond smalltalk fix and continue, morphic directness, or a LISP REPL. We've caught up to that past, it is now time to go further. And of course, no one is really quite sure what the lisp machines ever did really, it's not like they have a video on YouTube :) It is better to have that argument with Gilad Bracha, I guess.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Actually there are a few videos. :) But I guess all fail short how they really were. http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=10 http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=10 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      I still am interested in piecing together the experience for history. I hear stories but never any real details!
      - jules 11y ago
        I think most of the amazement came from the time they were in. In that time this was truly revolutionary. Having a whole OS based on it is still arguably revolutionary, but from a programming/IDE perspective I don't think they are anything special any more. As far as I know a modern Lisp + Emacs gives you roughly the same experience.
        pjmlp 11y ago
        Emacs fails short because it doesn't allow for live editing of inline data structures, unless it has changed on the last years. Dr Racket's REPL is probably closer to the experience. Also very few IDEs enjoy the same edit-continue experience, maybe commercial Common Lisp environments.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Not sure what you mean by "live editing of inline data structures" here (care to give an example?), but the interactive debugger in Emacs/SLIME can do quite a lot of nice things, including modifying arbitrary data on the fly, live. For instance, if I have a hashtable returned from a function I called in REPL, I can inspect it and modify its values and properties. Also, within the REPL itself, text is "smart" and copy-paste tracks references, so I can paste the "unreadable objects" (i.e. #<Foo 0xCAFECAFE>) directly into REPL calls and have it work, because SLIME will track the reference linked to a particular piece of text output.
        pjmlp 11y ago
        Check the example of image editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
        lispm 11y ago
        The presentation based REPL in Emacs + SLIME was inspired by the Symbolics Lisp Machine presentation feature. But I can assure you, there is a difference of a REPL feature in an editor and a GUI using it system wide, as on the Lisp Machine. Both in depth of the features, integration and the feel of the user interface.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Live programming goes way beyond smalltalk fix and continue, morphic directness, or a LISP REPL. We've caught up to that past Actually we didn't. The vast majority of programmers doesn't have access even to those -- and even those that do don't have it in any much advanced way compared to those older environments.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      I meant us researchers and inventors :) Anyways, we are just now moving out of Smalltalk/LISP's shadow, and it feels good.
seanmcdirmid 11y ago
I still wish Chris Hancock would get more credit, his work on live programming was really 10 years too early. It is a beautifully written thesis, and hardly very academic, but rather very pragmatic and useful. I just wish it came with videos, but I guess YouTube wasn't around back then :)

by Permit 11y ago

pjmlp 11y ago

It is great that Bret's work made the ideas more mainstream, but on my research for Xerox PARC's work I would say the ideas go back at very least to the interactive coding available on Smalltalk, Interlisp-D and Mesa/Cedar. Interactive coding is with us since the early 80's, the ideas just failed to go mainstream.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Live programming goes way beyond smalltalk fix and continue, morphic directness, or a LISP REPL. We've caught up to that past, it is now time to go further. And of course, no one is really quite sure what the lisp machines ever did really, it's not like they have a video on YouTube :) It is better to have that argument with Gilad Bracha, I guess.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Actually there are a few videos. :) But I guess all fail short how they really were. http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=10 http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=10 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=932 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    I still am interested in piecing together the experience for history. I hear stories but never any real details!
    - jules 11y ago
      I think most of the amazement came from the time they were in. In that time this was truly revolutionary. Having a whole OS based on it is still arguably revolutionary, but from a programming/IDE perspective I don't think they are anything special any more. As far as I know a modern Lisp + Emacs gives you roughly the same experience.
      - pjmlp 11y ago
        Emacs fails short because it doesn't allow for live editing of inline data structures, unless it has changed on the last years. Dr Racket's REPL is probably closer to the experience. Also very few IDEs enjoy the same edit-continue experience, maybe commercial Common Lisp environments.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Not sure what you mean by "live editing of inline data structures" here (care to give an example?), but the interactive debugger in Emacs/SLIME can do quite a lot of nice things, including modifying arbitrary data on the fly, live. For instance, if I have a hashtable returned from a function I called in REPL, I can inspect it and modify its values and properties. Also, within the REPL itself, text is "smart" and copy-paste tracks references, so I can paste the "unreadable objects" (i.e. #<Foo 0xCAFECAFE>) directly into REPL calls and have it work, because SLIME will track the reference linked to a particular piece of text output.
        pjmlp 11y ago
        Check the example of image editing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
        lispm 11y ago
        The presentation based REPL in Emacs + SLIME was inspired by the Symbolics Lisp Machine presentation feature. But I can assure you, there is a difference of a REPL feature in an editor and a GUI using it system wide, as on the Lisp Machine. Both in depth of the features, integration and the feel of the user interface.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Live programming goes way beyond smalltalk fix and continue, morphic directness, or a LISP REPL. We've caught up to that past Actually we didn't. The vast majority of programmers doesn't have access even to those -- and even those that do don't have it in any much advanced way compared to those older environments.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    I meant us researchers and inventors :) Anyways, we are just now moving out of Smalltalk/LISP's shadow, and it feels good.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago

I still wish Chris Hancock would get more credit, his work on live programming was really 10 years too early. It is a beautifully written thesis, and hardly very academic, but rather very pragmatic and useful. I just wish it came with videos, but I guess YouTube wasn't around back then :)