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Dit is ready! About 4 months ago, we posted just a website to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263839

Dit is ready! About 4 months ago, we posted just a website to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263839 Now we're launching the MVP and hope you'll join us in trying to make data much better! For a primer on what this is all really about, I wrote quite a bit on this exact topic: https://github.com/isaiahshiner/dit-cli/blob/master/docs/whats-the-point.md https://github.com/isaiahshiner/dit-cli/blob/master/docs/wha...

ssivark 7y ago
Interesting! You might be interested in an old HN discussion between Alan Kay and Rich Hickey (JGI). It sounds to me like dit is basically an attempt at solving the problem that Alan Kay was getting at when he conceptualized “object oriented programming” as affecting behavior (even extracting information) from an object by passing messages to it — which would be a critical bottleneck when trying to build an “inter-galactic network” in the spirit of Licklider’s vision.
- IsaiahShiner 7y ago
  Ah, this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 Super interesting! It's like, data, without an interpreter, has no meaning. We rely super heavily on humans as general purpose interpreters, and when we design computers, we make sure as much of the meaning as possible is implicit. Rich was saying that the interpreter is secondary, which is only true if data serves a single purpose. Alan is getting at the idea that data could serve every purpose if only the interpreter wasn't implicit. If the concept of "data" referred to both the value and the meaning, the language and how to interpret it. But, from a reddit comment: An interpreter doesn't magically give meaning to data, since the interpreter has to translate to something, and that something has to be written by a program that understands both the from and to sides of the conversation. The point of dit is to literally be that universal language. Yes, you do need both sides to explicitly lay out what they main, both to convey and understand the meaning. The difference is that the number of connections is unlimited. You need a human for that critical first step, but then the machine can speak "dit" language to any other machine that speaks dit. Rich couldn't conceive of the idea that dit could be real. I think it can. I think we can make Licklider's vision, data and programs that can move around without respect to the original developers intentions because they all speak dit. Thank you for sharing, super interesting!

ssivark 7y ago

Interesting! You might be interested in an old HN discussion between Alan Kay and Rich Hickey (JGI). It sounds to me like dit is basically an attempt at solving the problem that Alan Kay was getting at when he conceptualized “object oriented programming” as affecting behavior (even extracting information) from an object by passing messages to it — which would be a critical bottleneck when trying to build an “inter-galactic network” in the spirit of Licklider’s vision.

IsaiahShiner 7y ago
Ah, this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 Super interesting! It's like, data, without an interpreter, has no meaning. We rely super heavily on humans as general purpose interpreters, and when we design computers, we make sure as much of the meaning as possible is implicit. Rich was saying that the interpreter is secondary, which is only true if data serves a single purpose. Alan is getting at the idea that data could serve every purpose if only the interpreter wasn't implicit. If the concept of "data" referred to both the value and the meaning, the language and how to interpret it. But, from a reddit comment: An interpreter doesn't magically give meaning to data, since the interpreter has to translate to something, and that something has to be written by a program that understands both the from and to sides of the conversation. The point of dit is to literally be that universal language. Yes, you do need both sides to explicitly lay out what they main, both to convey and understand the meaning. The difference is that the number of connections is unlimited. You need a human for that critical first step, but then the machine can speak "dit" language to any other machine that speaks dit. Rich couldn't conceive of the idea that dit could be real. I think it can. I think we can make Licklider's vision, data and programs that can move around without respect to the original developers intentions because they all speak dit. Thank you for sharing, super interesting!