14 ms·

The unix philosophy is along these lines i think, making small tools that do one thing well, and text input/output. Perhaps its time for an update of this for t

by phreeza 16y ago

The unix philosophy is along these lines i think, making small tools that do one thing well, and text input/output. Perhaps its time for an update of this for the 21st century.

kiba 16y ago
I recall the GNU project being somewhat ambitious about these sort of stuff. If the rest of the world were rebuilt to be like emacs(uniformly customizable, extensible, and self documenting), I'll go totally bonkers. Suddenly, my playground is no longer limited to emacs, but the entire computing environment. However, this kind of code idealism is unfortunately killed by good enough and the desire of the FSF of going into politics. That's what freedom to me is like. It's not something nebulous like fighting evil developers or something. It's a world in which users feel like a badass, and which everything is an extension of your mind. It's a crying shame that the free software world wasn't able to realize that kind of potential.
- kmort 16y ago
  Do you feel that the Semantic Web concept now leads that charge?
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    The Semantic web isn't the solution IMHO. The problem with the semantic web is that it forces a narrative based on an ontological approach. But in my mind the real value in connecting everything is the connections themselves rather then their meaning which should never be settled. In other words the value of connecting everything is that it opens up for multiple interpretations, descriptions and clustering. We should look at data more like neurons than ontological items. I.e. absent of meaning without context.
  - kiba 16y ago
    I don't understand what the Semantic Web is about at all. It seem to be about imbuing means in links or something. It doesn't seem to be anything related to the feeling of being in emacs and using it.
- sprout 16y ago
  'Good enough' is largely a political problem. I don't think the FSF would have gone into politics if it were possible to rewrite the world in the style of Emacs. That's a political goal, that's not a technical one. I think we're sort of in a pre-literate society in a lot of ways, and people (or whatever) will look back on this century as sort of like the beginnings of language. And like natural language, I think computer languages and their use are going to eventually have much more interesting political implications. Especially once the concept of IP dies and we start looking at code as a conversation.
  - kiba 16y ago
    That's a different use of the term politics you got there. I think FSF failed was due more to development methodology rather than the feasibility of the goal in itself. Take a look at emacs. Its release cycle is very long in between, survives forks, and generally being unpalatable to new users imitated by its keyboard configuration. It still lives. It still thrive. But it doesn't thrive as much as it should.

by phreeza 16y ago

The unix philosophy is along these lines i think, making small tools that do one thing well, and text input/output. Perhaps its time for an update of this for the 21st century.

kiba 16y ago

I recall the GNU project being somewhat ambitious about these sort of stuff. If the rest of the world were rebuilt to be like emacs(uniformly customizable, extensible, and self documenting), I'll go totally bonkers. Suddenly, my playground is no longer limited to emacs, but the entire computing environment. However, this kind of code idealism is unfortunately killed by good enough and the desire of the FSF of going into politics. That's what freedom to me is like. It's not something nebulous like fighting evil developers or something. It's a world in which users feel like a badass, and which everything is an extension of your mind. It's a crying shame that the free software world wasn't able to realize that kind of potential.

kmort 16y ago
Do you feel that the Semantic Web concept now leads that charge?
- ThomPete 16y ago
  The Semantic web isn't the solution IMHO. The problem with the semantic web is that it forces a narrative based on an ontological approach. But in my mind the real value in connecting everything is the connections themselves rather then their meaning which should never be settled. In other words the value of connecting everything is that it opens up for multiple interpretations, descriptions and clustering. We should look at data more like neurons than ontological items. I.e. absent of meaning without context.
- kiba 16y ago
  I don't understand what the Semantic Web is about at all. It seem to be about imbuing means in links or something. It doesn't seem to be anything related to the feeling of being in emacs and using it.
sprout 16y ago
'Good enough' is largely a political problem. I don't think the FSF would have gone into politics if it were possible to rewrite the world in the style of Emacs. That's a political goal, that's not a technical one. I think we're sort of in a pre-literate society in a lot of ways, and people (or whatever) will look back on this century as sort of like the beginnings of language. And like natural language, I think computer languages and their use are going to eventually have much more interesting political implications. Especially once the concept of IP dies and we start looking at code as a conversation.
- kiba 16y ago
  That's a different use of the term politics you got there. I think FSF failed was due more to development methodology rather than the feasibility of the goal in itself. Take a look at emacs. Its release cycle is very long in between, survives forks, and generally being unpalatable to new users imitated by its keyboard configuration. It still lives. It still thrive. But it doesn't thrive as much as it should.