3 ms·

> and right now there is pretty much zero of it There's huge investment in programming languages and environments. It wouldn't surprise me if there's more than

> and right now there is pretty much zero of it There's huge investment in programming languages and environments. It wouldn't surprise me if there's more than there has ever been at any one time. And it's entirely healthy that some fail. That's a primary means of learning. I would anticipate that some of the ideas from Eve will find their way into other environments, as did ideas from LightTable before it.

robertkrahn01 9y ago
Where? The state of the art today of - debugging - code browsing, system exploration - customizable, modular, non-textual user interfaces* - immediate feedback after code changes - non-textual programming is < what Lisp and Smalltalk environments provided more than thirty years ago. * not necessarily visual programming. Look at the Genera Lisp OS or Plan 9 for example.
- lucozade 9y ago
  Languages: Swift, Go, Rust, Julia, Haskell, JS, C++ etc etc Dev envs: VSCode, Electron, more build systems than you can shake a stick at, VMs, containers, playgrounds etc Non-textual programming. For general purpose programming, I can't think of any. There are some dead ends that will probably remain so. For niche programming, there are loads. And to my point, Lisp, Smalltalk and Plan 9 are all good examples of failed experiments that folk took ideas from and used in subsequent projects. Now, you may not like the investment and innovation. It may not be what you had in mind. Each to their own. But there's plenty of investment and no small amount of innovation.
  - nikofeyn 9y ago
    labview is a general purpose visual programming language. it's as general purpose as, say, python. it's just different and proprietary.
    - lucozade 9y ago
      That's fair. Same can be said for some of the educational tools too. More of a cul de sac than a dead end.
  - robertkrahn01 9y ago
    No, it's not about personal preference. It is about what is (im)possible when the only context to be considered is the status quo. The technologies you list are innovative but in the end just iterations of inventions of the 1970s. The 70s were so special because stuff happened there was the result of increased spending into science and research of the 60s after the Sputnik crisis [1]. Today's R&D is not focused on what could be possible in 10, 20, or 30 years but in 1, 2, or 3 quarters since companies funding the research need to be focused on their bottom line. The Eve project was special insofar in that it received funding not tied to short-term goals – but only to an amount that in the end wasn't enough. Similar things happened elsewhere and this bars the way to more meaningful inventions [2]. [1] The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. Mitchell Waldrop. [2] Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o

robertkrahn01 9y ago

Where? The state of the art today of - debugging - code browsing, system exploration - customizable, modular, non-textual user interfaces* - immediate feedback after code changes - non-textual programming is < what Lisp and Smalltalk environments provided more than thirty years ago. * not necessarily visual programming. Look at the Genera Lisp OS or Plan 9 for example.

lucozade 9y ago
Languages: Swift, Go, Rust, Julia, Haskell, JS, C++ etc etc Dev envs: VSCode, Electron, more build systems than you can shake a stick at, VMs, containers, playgrounds etc Non-textual programming. For general purpose programming, I can't think of any. There are some dead ends that will probably remain so. For niche programming, there are loads. And to my point, Lisp, Smalltalk and Plan 9 are all good examples of failed experiments that folk took ideas from and used in subsequent projects. Now, you may not like the investment and innovation. It may not be what you had in mind. Each to their own. But there's plenty of investment and no small amount of innovation.
- nikofeyn 9y ago
  labview is a general purpose visual programming language. it's as general purpose as, say, python. it's just different and proprietary.
  - lucozade 9y ago
    That's fair. Same can be said for some of the educational tools too. More of a cul de sac than a dead end.
- robertkrahn01 9y ago
  No, it's not about personal preference. It is about what is (im)possible when the only context to be considered is the status quo. The technologies you list are innovative but in the end just iterations of inventions of the 1970s. The 70s were so special because stuff happened there was the result of increased spending into science and research of the 60s after the Sputnik crisis [1]. Today's R&D is not focused on what could be possible in 10, 20, or 30 years but in 1, 2, or 3 quarters since companies funding the research need to be focused on their bottom line. The Eve project was special insofar in that it received funding not tied to short-term goals – but only to an amount that in the end wasn't enough. Similar things happened elsewhere and this bars the way to more meaningful inventions [2]. [1] The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. Mitchell Waldrop. [2] Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o