6 ms·

Telescript programming language

66 points by bluerobotcat 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
puzzle 8y ago
I loved this language. I still have all the papers somewhere. Unfortunately, the announcement of Java killed the few remaining chances it had of outliving General Magic.
- pmarreck 8y ago
  Was the stack-based assembly it compiled to similar to Forth?
pavlov 8y ago
This is probably posted now thanks to the Andy Hertzfeld interview from the other day [1] where he discussed Telescript as a failure. The notion of a restricted server-side language for user scripts still sounds useful and an unfilled niche. [1] https://www.notion.so/tools-and-craft/01-andy-hertzfeld https://www.notion.so/tools-and-craft/01-andy-hertzfeld
- jnwatson 8y ago
  Mobile code was dying before, but the final nail in the coffin is the Spectre/Meltdown class of vulnerabilities (with new variants coming out monthly). It seems modern microprocessors simply aren't designed to run untrusted code.
  - pavlov 8y ago
    Couldn’t one run user scripts on separate servers with non-OoO CPUs: low-end ARM or MIPS or RISCV or whatever?
    - jnwatson 8y ago
      Sure, but requiring separate hardware to run code is a pretty high cost.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Mobile code was dying before, but the final nail in the coffin is the Spectre/Meltdown class of vulnerabilities (with new variants coming out monthly). Is it though? I mean, has anybody stopped using Javascript as a result of Meltdown/Spectre? True, Java applets largely died off, but that was as much because it took Sun WAY too long to ship the "Consumer JRE", coupled with a rash of Java security issues over a certain window of time, that made people scared to enable Java in their browsers. I doubt many more people disabled Java after Spectre/Meltdown, than before.
- dang 8y ago
  That interview was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17475413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17475413.
krishanath 8y ago
Here's something few people know: Sun saw Telescript as a threat (because Sun was all about "the network is the computer" and now Telescript was invading this space) and started the Java project in response. Microsoft saw General Magic's social interface and deemed it to be a threat to Windows. Their response was "Microsoft Bob".
fmajid 8y ago
I actually worked on General Magic circa 1994-1995 at France Télécom. The whole tech stack was garbage, despite AT&T’s valiant efforts to salvage it.
- dang 8y ago
  It would be much better if you could turn that word "garbage" into a sentence, or better a paragraph, so readers could learn something. I'm sure people would be interested to hear your experiences.
cwyers 8y ago
> In 1990, Marc Porat convinced then-Apple-CEO John Sculley that the future of computing lay not in desktop personal computers, but much smaller portable devices combining computing power, communications systems, and data located on network-accessible servers. Well that was staggeringly prescient.
wmf 8y ago
In retrospect, Telescript and mobile agents were a bet against the Internet; if you have good connectivity it's easier to use RPC.

66 points by bluerobotcat 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I loved this language. I still have all the papers somewhere. Unfortunately, the announcement of Java killed the few remaining chances it had of outliving General Magic.

pmarreck 8y ago
Was the stack-based assembly it compiled to similar to Forth?

pavlov 8y ago

This is probably posted now thanks to the Andy Hertzfeld interview from the other day [1] where he discussed Telescript as a failure. The notion of a restricted server-side language for user scripts still sounds useful and an unfilled niche. [1] https://www.notion.so/tools-and-craft/01-andy-hertzfeld https://www.notion.so/tools-and-craft/01-andy-hertzfeld

jnwatson 8y ago
Mobile code was dying before, but the final nail in the coffin is the Spectre/Meltdown class of vulnerabilities (with new variants coming out monthly). It seems modern microprocessors simply aren't designed to run untrusted code.
- pavlov 8y ago
  Couldn’t one run user scripts on separate servers with non-OoO CPUs: low-end ARM or MIPS or RISCV or whatever?
  - jnwatson 8y ago
    Sure, but requiring separate hardware to run code is a pretty high cost.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Mobile code was dying before, but the final nail in the coffin is the Spectre/Meltdown class of vulnerabilities (with new variants coming out monthly). Is it though? I mean, has anybody stopped using Javascript as a result of Meltdown/Spectre? True, Java applets largely died off, but that was as much because it took Sun WAY too long to ship the "Consumer JRE", coupled with a rash of Java security issues over a certain window of time, that made people scared to enable Java in their browsers. I doubt many more people disabled Java after Spectre/Meltdown, than before.
dang 8y ago
That interview was discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17475413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17475413.

krishanath 8y ago

Here's something few people know: Sun saw Telescript as a threat (because Sun was all about "the network is the computer" and now Telescript was invading this space) and started the Java project in response. Microsoft saw General Magic's social interface and deemed it to be a threat to Windows. Their response was "Microsoft Bob".

fmajid 8y ago

I actually worked on General Magic circa 1994-1995 at France Télécom. The whole tech stack was garbage, despite AT&T’s valiant efforts to salvage it.

dang 8y ago
It would be much better if you could turn that word "garbage" into a sentence, or better a paragraph, so readers could learn something. I'm sure people would be interested to hear your experiences.

cwyers 8y ago

> In 1990, Marc Porat convinced then-Apple-CEO John Sculley that the future of computing lay not in desktop personal computers, but much smaller portable devices combining computing power, communications systems, and data located on network-accessible servers. Well that was staggeringly prescient.

wmf 8y ago

In retrospect, Telescript and mobile agents were a bet against the Internet; if you have good connectivity it's easier to use RPC.