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We need to come up with a name for this "branch" of computing that is less followed and that has not been adopted en masse by the wider culture. It's going to h

by scroot 8y ago

We need to come up with a name for this "branch" of computing that is less followed and that has not been adopted en masse by the wider culture. It's going to have a second wind soon.

oblio 8y ago
Well, the benefit of these machines manifests itself only for developers, especially for system programmers. Those are a tiny minority of computer users out there. So I'm not sure about this second coming :)
- scroot 8y ago
  I don't agree. There is a place for something like end user programming. It was a big deal in the 90s and has largely fallen out of favor as developers go deeper into their own universes. Certainly something like Hypercard wasn't "only for developers" and there are many lessons one can draw from that. There is no good reason that personal computing systems shouldn't or can't be in the large end user programmable systems.
  - oblio 8y ago
    Yes, there is a place for end user programming, among the end users that want to be programmers. History has shown time and time again that's a minuscule part of end users. Even Excel formulas are out of reach for most end users.
    - scroot 8y ago
      To what history are you referring? There are scholars who study this kind of thing (check out Bonnie Nardi, for example). Good systems that integrate end user programming are popular and used by non programmers when they are available. If they are a minuscule part of contemporary personal computing it is because developers have stopped making these types of systems, not because it is somehow above the abilities of regular people.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    "The world has progressed from smart users in front of dumb terminals, to dumb users in front of smart terminals." --Proverb
- rbanffy 8y ago
  This platform would also need to be useful in order to reach more than a very restricted audience. I find Plan 9 and Squeak/Pharo fascinating tools, but I need a "normal" machine to browse the web, deploy the software I write for a living, run Slack... I always think it's a shame the only OS options we use these days are flavors of UNIX, a distant descendant of MVS, and the bastard child of VMS with a confusing GUI bolted on top of it.
  - scroot 8y ago
    This is where we have real opportunity that didn't exist in the 90s. Back then, we had more diverse (and exotic) personal computing environments, but they weren't largely online and they had one other problem: incompatibilities. Today we don't worry as much about incompatibility, largely because we have widely accepted and used standards that we lacked back then. One could build a whole new personal computing machine and/or environment and as long as it implemented many of these standards it would be entirely usable (things like JSON, XML, etc). In fact, the only "application" one would need in such a system is a web browser (no small task, I know). That goes a long way for "bringing people in." There is lots of room for creativity at present but unfortunately little in the way of imagination or will.

by scroot 8y ago

We need to come up with a name for this "branch" of computing that is less followed and that has not been adopted en masse by the wider culture. It's going to have a second wind soon.

oblio 8y ago

Well, the benefit of these machines manifests itself only for developers, especially for system programmers. Those are a tiny minority of computer users out there. So I'm not sure about this second coming :)

scroot 8y ago
I don't agree. There is a place for something like end user programming. It was a big deal in the 90s and has largely fallen out of favor as developers go deeper into their own universes. Certainly something like Hypercard wasn't "only for developers" and there are many lessons one can draw from that. There is no good reason that personal computing systems shouldn't or can't be in the large end user programmable systems.
- oblio 8y ago
  Yes, there is a place for end user programming, among the end users that want to be programmers. History has shown time and time again that's a minuscule part of end users. Even Excel formulas are out of reach for most end users.
  - scroot 8y ago
    To what history are you referring? There are scholars who study this kind of thing (check out Bonnie Nardi, for example). Good systems that integrate end user programming are popular and used by non programmers when they are available. If they are a minuscule part of contemporary personal computing it is because developers have stopped making these types of systems, not because it is somehow above the abilities of regular people.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  "The world has progressed from smart users in front of dumb terminals, to dumb users in front of smart terminals." --Proverb
rbanffy 8y ago
This platform would also need to be useful in order to reach more than a very restricted audience. I find Plan 9 and Squeak/Pharo fascinating tools, but I need a "normal" machine to browse the web, deploy the software I write for a living, run Slack... I always think it's a shame the only OS options we use these days are flavors of UNIX, a distant descendant of MVS, and the bastard child of VMS with a confusing GUI bolted on top of it.
- scroot 8y ago
  This is where we have real opportunity that didn't exist in the 90s. Back then, we had more diverse (and exotic) personal computing environments, but they weren't largely online and they had one other problem: incompatibilities. Today we don't worry as much about incompatibility, largely because we have widely accepted and used standards that we lacked back then. One could build a whole new personal computing machine and/or environment and as long as it implemented many of these standards it would be entirely usable (things like JSON, XML, etc). In fact, the only "application" one would need in such a system is a web browser (no small task, I know). That goes a long way for "bringing people in." There is lots of room for creativity at present but unfortunately little in the way of imagination or will.