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Wow. This is the hardest problem in programming. This is a very thought-provoking tour of nearly forty-years' worth of valiant efforts to tackle it. Add Sket

Wow. This is the hardest problem in programming. This is a very thought-provoking tour of nearly forty-years' worth of valiant efforts to tackle it. Add Sketchpad, and you'll have half a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad

Chris2048 9y ago
I also think there's something missing: quite a few of these cherry-pick their domains. What I mean by this, is the Brett-Victor style interactive programming is always some kind of visual GUI/game/shape drawing program. The majority of computer programs will need plugins e.g. to generate output statistics/visualizations to effectively debug visually.
- derefr 9y ago
  I've always thought that a "killer app" for a REPL or "notebook" software, would be a presentation layer that receives structured data, and then runs a whole suite of visualizations on it in parallel, and then chooses whichever display format—itself still structured data in e.g. SVG—is the smallest. In other words, the one that ends up compressing the data the best, in the process (presumably) finding the clearest signal.
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    I've got an idea myself, on doing something like this for the actual execution path - e.g. detecting what fields on of dict a function acts upon. The immediate use is generation of minimal test data (the least data that runs each possible execution path), but I think in general it could be useful for debugging; consider knowing that, for example, the function "Int Foo(Dict bar)" will (conditionally) access only a certain key on bar, or will (necessarily) always require a certain key, such that this kind of information is available as a tooltip when you mouseover the parameter.
i336_ 9y ago
I get happy when I see SketchPad on here. I consider it the hands-down best software system that ever existed. If anyone has any ideas as to where/how I might be able to track down the actual SketchPad code I would love to hear it. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2, the machine SketchPad ran on, had 460KB of 36-bit memory, and it. ran. at. 400kHz. - yes, 400k instructions per second. The CAD system that introduced the idea of the GUI, clipboard, OOP, and so many other things, ran only a little faster than the masked-ROM calculators you can buy for a couple dollars at the store down the road nowadays. It's kind of mind-blowingly awe-inspiring and yet unbelievably depressing. I took the above from what I said last time SketchPad was mentioned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13938330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13938330).
- phkahler 9y ago
  You may also like the simplicity of the UI for SolveSpace: http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- i336_ 9y ago
  Update: Someone got in touch via email to let me know about something interesting that was only donated 3 months ago: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 On the one hand, this is the source code to SketchPad!!! On the other hand... the scan quality is extremely low, and I'm planning on contacting the CHM to see if they can schedule a rescan at some point in the future - basically before the paper wears out, as there are currently no TX-2 emulators. But this is awesome.

Chris2048 9y ago

I also think there's something missing: quite a few of these cherry-pick their domains. What I mean by this, is the Brett-Victor style interactive programming is always some kind of visual GUI/game/shape drawing program. The majority of computer programs will need plugins e.g. to generate output statistics/visualizations to effectively debug visually.

derefr 9y ago
I've always thought that a "killer app" for a REPL or "notebook" software, would be a presentation layer that receives structured data, and then runs a whole suite of visualizations on it in parallel, and then chooses whichever display format—itself still structured data in e.g. SVG—is the smallest. In other words, the one that ends up compressing the data the best, in the process (presumably) finding the clearest signal.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  I've got an idea myself, on doing something like this for the actual execution path - e.g. detecting what fields on of dict a function acts upon. The immediate use is generation of minimal test data (the least data that runs each possible execution path), but I think in general it could be useful for debugging; consider knowing that, for example, the function "Int Foo(Dict bar)" will (conditionally) access only a certain key on bar, or will (necessarily) always require a certain key, such that this kind of information is available as a tooltip when you mouseover the parameter.

i336_ 9y ago

I get happy when I see SketchPad on here. I consider it the hands-down best software system that ever existed. If anyone has any ideas as to where/how I might be able to track down the actual SketchPad code I would love to hear it. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-2, the machine SketchPad ran on, had 460KB of 36-bit memory, and it. ran. at. 400kHz. - yes, 400k instructions per second. The CAD system that introduced the idea of the GUI, clipboard, OOP, and so many other things, ran only a little faster than the masked-ROM calculators you can buy for a couple dollars at the store down the road nowadays. It's kind of mind-blowingly awe-inspiring and yet unbelievably depressing. I took the above from what I said last time SketchPad was mentioned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13938330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13938330).

phkahler 9y ago
You may also like the simplicity of the UI for SolveSpace: http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
i336_ 9y ago
Update: Someone got in touch via email to let me know about something interesting that was only donated 3 months ago: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903 On the one hand, this is the source code to SketchPad!!! On the other hand... the scan quality is extremely low, and I'm planning on contacting the CHM to see if they can schedule a rescan at some point in the future - basically before the paper wears out, as there are currently no TX-2 emulators. But this is awesome.