13 ms·

Project Mage is an effort to build a power-user environment in Common Lisp

190 points by zdw 4y ago

aleks224 4y ago
If I'm understanding this correctly, with your Lisp IDE you could have an image sub-editor which may expose functions for image modification (eg. cropping), which could be called from the parent-editor. Is this accurate? Also, what is it about Lisp specifically that makes it suitable for this undertaking?
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  > If I'm understanding this correctly, with your Lisp IDE you could have an image sub-editor which may expose functions for image modification (eg. cropping), which could be called from the parent-editor. Is this accurate? Yep, and, presumably, you could then interact with it with your mouse, like draw something in it. (One correction though: it doesn't have to be a Lisp IDE, but just any Runic document.) There are a few facts at play: 1. Lenses are cells, which means they are just graphical objects responsible for their own graphical output and input handling (among many other things). 2. An image editor would be a cell as well. 3. A lens could, at runtime, dynamically, inherit from the image editor via an :is-a relationship, and, thus, become an image editor too. Of course this would require some UI programming to get right, but that's the idea. > Also, what is it about Lisp specifically that makes it suitable for this undertaking? Please, see: https://project-mage.org/why-common-lisp https://project-mage.org/why-common-lisp TLDR: It's an image-based language, and interactivity is a top-priority for power use. For instance, if something goes wrong, you don't want the application to crash. Incremental development for GUIs in general is pretty crucial. So, the only other candidate could be Smalltalk, but I like Lisp better.
  - aleks224 4y ago
    Very interesting! My understanding is that you're thinking about this more in terms of an 'application environment for power-users' than in terms of a 'multi-faceted IDE with lensing'. To clarify, the specificity of Emacs is that it fully exposes it's internal function sets to the world. This could be done by other applications in an organized way. For example, in the picture-editing app example, it would amount to allowing scripting over the features that the app exposes. The scripting feature would come from the environment, not from anything specific the app itself does (apart from being built in that environment). The previously mentioned IDE could then be thought of simply the multi-tasking environment in which such generic applications are running. Does this roughly correspond to what the project is about?
    - some-mthfka 4y ago
      You are absolutely on point, yes. The building blocks themselves are what the users will extend upon and use. That plays a very big role in composition and reuse. There will also be configurations and contexts (which are really quite simple mechanisms, really) that will factor into this, too (for the purposes of customization so that the users don't have to modify the original code to change some behavior or slot). Of course, prototype OO itself has a key agency here. I also like to think about this in terms of "building blocks", not just an exposition of API. So, Emacs has the notion of a buffer for its building block (the only one, I believe). Cells and lenses will be building blocks.
some-mthfka 4y ago
Hi! I am the author of the project. There's a discussion on Emacs is Not Enough that has been taking place today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375137 The Emacs is Not Enough is quite ranty, and its style is not to some people's taste (well, it is kind of a rant, after all). If you want the meat, indeed, please see any other articles on the homepage, or, for an overview of the project, this: https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure Thank you.
- viksit 4y ago
  thanks for this! have you thought about hierarchical data structure manipulation in emacs style cl environments? any tools to look at?
  - some-mthfka 4y ago
    I am not sure I understand the question, but, for instance, Lem is an emacs-inspired CL editor. Not structural or even hierarchical though.
- whartung 4y ago
  I hate to taint this, but reading up on Fern I have to point to JavaFX. It rings a lot of similarity with what is being talked about here. There may be other frameworks also. But JFX captures much of this. It doesn't have your schemas (its obviously based on Javas class and object system), but it does have constraints, it does have bindings (not as sophisticated as yours, but they exist and quite useful in practice). It has the scene graph, it handles contextual styling via CSS. It has its layout components, and GUI components. It even has 3D ;). I will say about the bindings that when the graph gets large it can be fun to try to keep in your head, and, unfortunately, there's no real way to visualize it. So, when something changes (or changes in a way you don't like), it can be an endeavor to source the change and navigate the relationships. The primary reason I mention this is just to lift it up as an example of many of the concepts you're discussing, but in "production" code, used by many, for quite some time. There may be insights there that can be mined as to possibly decisions that were made that you could apply (or not) to your work. Are the limitations of JFX done by design? Limited by Java? Limited by performance? Limited by "haven't got to it yet"? I don't know, but, anyway, just something you may want to study a little. I wish you luck on your project!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nailuj 4y ago
I admire your bravery for even trying to tackle this. Your rant about Emacs spoke to my soul. It's such a pain to use, but nothing else even comes close to playing the same game. I've been mulling over similar thoughts for years and there's clearly some space in the overlap between Emacs, Excel, Smalltalk and web browsers for a true power user computer interface. I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure.
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Thanks : ) I will do my best to deliver.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
missed opportunity in ANT not being called aint, imo.
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Ha, maybe : )
vindarel 4y ago
It was unclear to me, but some code was written. https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure#org63e88da https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure#org63e88da > Fern is the most technical section of the bunch. Perhaps that's because much of it is implemented already (KR, constraints, basic geometry, and linear algebra). and it doesn't do everything from zero, but is somehow based on Garnet > Fern is a spiritual successor to Garnet, a Common Lisp project for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Garnet originated at CMU in 1987 and became unmaintained in 1994. It's a great toolkit which was used for many research projects, some of which are still active. https://project-mage.org/Code https://project-mage.org/Code with some unit tests. This makes me want to explore more. But what does the code do? An exercise for the reader.
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  The linear-algebra provides a usability layer to April (an APL compiler). The geometry is just geometry with intersections (Its pretty cool in that it has planes, infinite sections, etc). Then there's KR with formulas thrown out and the constraint solver right from multi-garnet. Some utils. It's a start. You are right, I will update that page with more explanations on the particular subsystems.
- herewulf 4y ago
  I'm looking forward to seeing this appear on Savannah with a corresponding mailing list. Or maybe on Sourcehut? Since the author did leave this tidbit on the Code page: > As for Savannah being not entirely modern, well, I like the fact that it has a mailing list.
  - some-mthfka 4y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Sourcehut, somehow is just didn't come up when I was researching the mailing list options. So far, looks like it has a really streamlined interface and is meant to be integrated with the mailing list workflow, which I didn't quite see on Savannah.
JonChesterfield 4y ago
Flexibility interacts poorly with composability. When everything is specialised at the whim of the developer, tying different pieces together is difficult. A lot of the rigidity in programming languages is there because it gives programmers (and programs) common ground to work from. Flexibility usually interacts poorly with performance as well. Specialisation to a domain is usually faster and can be dramatically faster, but the plumbing that makes the specialisation possible has a cost everywhere. I'm curious whether lisp's macros are sufficient to splice together dissimilar code and provide the domain specific optimisations one would want to eliminate the plumbing overhead. I would expect not but it'll be interesting to be proven wrong. It's interesting that you're starting with the user interface instead of the sufficiently smart compiler. "I'll rebuild the world in lisp" projects sometimes (usually?) stall in the first stage of writing their compiler. I think it's quite encouraging that you're building on an existing language implementation. That would be a lot to build in five years. Good luck and happy hacking.
- selestify 4y ago
  Do you have examples of other "rebuild the world in lisp" projects? I'd be curious to see how and why historical attempts have foundered
  - JonChesterfield 4y ago
    Not great examples. Hazy memories of readme files for projects that sound interesting but fizzle out, sometimes decades ago. Emacs is probably a success story in that genre. It's possible to use it as the first process booted iiuc. I certainly have days where it's the only process I run after gnome has booted. Guix has replaced a lot of Linux userspace infra with scheme. Successfully as far as I can tell. I think there are (non-emacs...) operating systems in various states of progress written in lisp. Sometimes one finds a compiler written in lisp which doesn't have a runtime in C. Jitawa, Maru are the only two I know of. All the others I've looked at seem to be built on top of C. I think they're both finished/abandoned. My rebuild everything project is still in the better compiler phase so I might be projecting. Hopefully I'll remember better anecdotes later.
esrh 4y ago
I feel like your campaign would benefit from explaining a little bit about who you are, what you've written before, and why we should believe you can actually accomplish this (understandably big project). People like to feel like they're paying a person, not an idea...
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Haha, alright. I have a github profile https://github.com/some-mthfka https://github.com/some-mthfka I am not particularly proud of most of those projects. Many of them were strictly done for fun. Some of them I did because I didn't know any better. The most sophisticated project I did was a game. You can grab it here for free: https://ottrta.itch.io/ottrta https://ottrta.itch.io/ottrta I don't promise it will bring you any joy, though. It was written in C++ and there's no code and there's only Windows binaries. Sorry, it was a few years back that I have published it. But, easily, that was the most interesting project I did, and the only usable one I have ever delivered. Otherwise, I am just some motherfucker (you guessed it). But you know what I believe? If you can think it, you can make it... That's all I want to say.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  The other way around is more meritocratic (avoid cult of personality or credentialism). Yeah good if it includes portfolio etc
some-mthfka 4y ago
I can't edit the top post, as it was posted a few days back, and the thread has resurfaced. Currently, I am preparing an "elevator pitch" (as a few people have suggested me do), and I hope to publish it in a few hours. So, if the "Power of Structure" article is too long to consume and you just want to get the central idea, there will be such a summary soon. Also: the project needs funding. I will work on it regardless, but it will be an awful lot easier for me to get this done with some help from the community. Please, see https://www.patreon.com/projectmage https://www.patreon.com/projectmage for the details. Thank you.
- ephaeton 4y ago
  your elevator pitch still assumes quite a slow elevator doing quite a long ride...
  - some-mthfka 4y ago
    Time is going to get by whether we like it or not. Here it is, by the way: https://project-mage.org/elevator https://project-mage.org/elevator
    - ephaeton 4y ago
      What I was getting at is that IMO you failed to boil down the essence of the proposal to a length that could be called 'elevator pitch'. By the time you start preaching the essence, everybody's arrived at their floor already.
      - some-mthfka 4y ago
        Oh, boy, how did I miss that one... heh. You have a point there, I have thrown in a TLDR.
jmercouris 4y ago
Good luck!
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Hey, thanks, I have recognized your nick, nyxt is a cool project : )
guestbest 4y ago
Could all this be done in a smalltalk environment like squeak? I was wondering because I am modestly proficient in ObjC
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Absolutely, it's image-based. I have considered Smalltalk, but I like macros a bit too much. I am pretty sure CL code will have better performance too, but don't quote me on this. A point worth making: if I were to do it in Smalltalk, I would choose the standardized one, as the most stable one. Stability is pretty important for a project like this, as you would imagine.
  - guestbest 4y ago
    I think you mean you like emacs but got hit by autocorrect. I think the key is to duplicate a mid nineties office suit that is hackable with a programmers IDE thrown in. Something like AppleWorks or MS Works with a database that is universal across all the documents in the suite with structures that allow reuse
    - MonkeyClub 4y ago
      I think he meant Common Lisp macros, a powerful feature of the language (and missing from Smalltalk) that allows one to easily write code that writes code.
      - guestbest 4y ago
        Are macros performant enough to allow a power user to replace a scripting language like elisp for a long file of strings, which if I remember correctly was the main issue with using emacs over clisp, unstructured strings.
        kagevf 4y ago
        Common Lisp macro expansion happens at compile time, so they wouldn't affect runtime performance.
nathell 4y ago
Me: this task is big, I’m not at all sure whether it’ll take a week or two, let’s better subdivide it into subtasks and estimate each one in turn This guy: I am pretty sure I can get done in ~5 years Seriously, though, fingers crossed! I no longer use CL professionally, but it will always have a dedicated spot in my heart. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this.
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  Planing long and talking big is simple, because you don't need to face the harsh reality of the actual challenge. You just define some goal, assume it's working and call it done. But when you plan short, you are already in front of the problems, and see the cracks, and must build your plan around them. This is a bit similar to how everyone can build and promise some elaborated framework, but still fails on the small important parts. So not planing big, might be actual a hint that you are just more based in reality, than in wishful thinking. Which can be seen as good.
yewenjie 4y ago
It makes me sad to see these kinds of efforts in 2023. It just seems very likely that we will have various advancements in AI (for example Hey GitHub) for input methods/ text-editing before this reaches to an MVP stage. While even 5 years ago I would choose Emacs and split ergonomic keyboards over any other cool new solution, I feel like recent developments in AI are just too good.
- brabel 4y ago
  How exactly do you expect advancements in AI to make this kind of project redundant?
  - yewenjie 4y ago
    It's not about making it fully redundant, but more about taking away a good chunk of the critical mass of users. If you could manipulate code by just voice or if you can write entire programs by natural language descriptions, would you really need a very capable and extensible text editor most of the time? Just for context, I'm an Emacs user for almost my entire programming career. And I enjoy crafting my Emacs for speed and efficiency.
woolion 4y ago
Just a few additional comments from our last exchange, based on https://project-mage.org/elevator https://project-mage.org/elevator. I prefer this elevator pitch because it gives some insight on how to proceed, beyond the stylistic choices. (If not a rant, it's a mixed bag of all I could think about the subject, since I never really exchanged about these ideas, so I'm interested in your thoughts as well.) The example of splitting "Hello world" into a list of words is a pretty bad example; structure as in list of words is something that text editors manage well (delete word, inner, etc). It contrasts with syntactic information that gives you structure that expands the range of what your editor can do. If you know something is a noun, you can give only a list of nouns to replace them, and any replace would be able to ignore any verb that is written the same way (I'm not sure what IDE that does scoped replace manages variables shadowing correctly, but this is something you should be able to do with structure). The idea of recursive, specialized micro-editors sounds like a real good idea. There should also probably be a way to specify that something is an encoding of a structure. For example, escaped shell commands, or SQL written as strings (not everything has DSLs, and even then it would still be useful). Ironically the delta diff program would correctly highlight syntax of SQL strings because it only analyzes the text, as opposed to most IDEs. There is also some prior art in the field, which reminds me of [0]. I'm currently working on knowledge management, which I think you have to split in different subfields; there's a great deal of overlap with project and document management, yet these would be mainly distinct workflows. I think logseq [1] and org-roam [2] tick all boxes for knowledge management, strictly speaking, but other tools are needed nonetheless. (digression: If you split it into plenty of different subsystems with another query system on top of it, you might just call your knowledge management a computer and the shell that querying tool. The issue you might have is that every program has its own API, so interfacing requires a custom facade, unless you directly write/eval shell commands.) There was another idea between code editing and knowledge management, called literate programming, which had a fairly high profile advocate (Donald Knuth). The idea would be to explain the code in the way that made sense for humans, and have the system (something in between the text and compiler, if not the compiler itself) assemble these blocks in 'computer order' for execution. He explicitly said that literate programming is not 'documented code', which is what people usually understand by it, but does not represent any paradigm shift. There's the Leo editor [3] that took some ideas from it, but I think it's also something that never really took off. Again, good luck etc. [0] https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2014/an_editor_for_composed_programs.html https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2014/an_editor_for_composed_pr... [1] https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq [2] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-ui https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-ui [3] https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/ https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/
erremerre 4y ago
As a user that is annoyed but some of the things you mention. Will I require to learn Common Lisp to use project-mage?
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  The thing about power-user software is that you can customize and package it to the point where it's indistinguishable from any other software, a polished end-user experience -- the user accepts the workflow of the given configuration and rolls with it, without ever touching the config. That's how some people use Emacs -- they just learn the bindings of the default distribution. But, for Emacs, there are also some distributions like Doom Emacs and such. They are just different user-friendly distros. What's more, if you have good GUI capabilities (which Mage will have), you could build visual user interfaces for configuration (I don't plan to make such UIs btw, but someone with a good-enough UI sense and interest in this stuff could attempt it at some point, I guess). If all you do is stick to some distro with some visual config tool, then you won't even have to know it's common lisp (unless some error is signalled and the interactive debugger pops up).
EEMac 4y ago
Someone says: "I'm making a new OS/desktop environment/text editor that works for power users." I hear: "I'm making this for me." There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Many powerful tools came about because people didn't like the way the old one worked.

190 points by zdw 4y ago

If I'm understanding this correctly, with your Lisp IDE you could have an image sub-editor which may expose functions for image modification (eg. cropping), which could be called from the parent-editor. Is this accurate? Also, what is it about Lisp specifically that makes it suitable for this undertaking?

some-mthfka 4y ago
> If I'm understanding this correctly, with your Lisp IDE you could have an image sub-editor which may expose functions for image modification (eg. cropping), which could be called from the parent-editor. Is this accurate? Yep, and, presumably, you could then interact with it with your mouse, like draw something in it. (One correction though: it doesn't have to be a Lisp IDE, but just any Runic document.) There are a few facts at play: 1. Lenses are cells, which means they are just graphical objects responsible for their own graphical output and input handling (among many other things). 2. An image editor would be a cell as well. 3. A lens could, at runtime, dynamically, inherit from the image editor via an :is-a relationship, and, thus, become an image editor too. Of course this would require some UI programming to get right, but that's the idea. > Also, what is it about Lisp specifically that makes it suitable for this undertaking? Please, see: https://project-mage.org/why-common-lisp https://project-mage.org/why-common-lisp TLDR: It's an image-based language, and interactivity is a top-priority for power use. For instance, if something goes wrong, you don't want the application to crash. Incremental development for GUIs in general is pretty crucial. So, the only other candidate could be Smalltalk, but I like Lisp better.
- aleks224 4y ago
  Very interesting! My understanding is that you're thinking about this more in terms of an 'application environment for power-users' than in terms of a 'multi-faceted IDE with lensing'. To clarify, the specificity of Emacs is that it fully exposes it's internal function sets to the world. This could be done by other applications in an organized way. For example, in the picture-editing app example, it would amount to allowing scripting over the features that the app exposes. The scripting feature would come from the environment, not from anything specific the app itself does (apart from being built in that environment). The previously mentioned IDE could then be thought of simply the multi-tasking environment in which such generic applications are running. Does this roughly correspond to what the project is about?
  - some-mthfka 4y ago
    You are absolutely on point, yes. The building blocks themselves are what the users will extend upon and use. That plays a very big role in composition and reuse. There will also be configurations and contexts (which are really quite simple mechanisms, really) that will factor into this, too (for the purposes of customization so that the users don't have to modify the original code to change some behavior or slot). Of course, prototype OO itself has a key agency here. I also like to think about this in terms of "building blocks", not just an exposition of API. So, Emacs has the notion of a buffer for its building block (the only one, I believe). Cells and lenses will be building blocks.

some-mthfka 4y ago

Hi! I am the author of the project. There's a discussion on Emacs is Not Enough that has been taking place today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34375137 The Emacs is Not Enough is quite ranty, and its style is not to some people's taste (well, it is kind of a rant, after all). If you want the meat, indeed, please see any other articles on the homepage, or, for an overview of the project, this: https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure Thank you.

viksit 4y ago
thanks for this! have you thought about hierarchical data structure manipulation in emacs style cl environments? any tools to look at?
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  I am not sure I understand the question, but, for instance, Lem is an emacs-inspired CL editor. Not structural or even hierarchical though.
whartung 4y ago
I hate to taint this, but reading up on Fern I have to point to JavaFX. It rings a lot of similarity with what is being talked about here. There may be other frameworks also. But JFX captures much of this. It doesn't have your schemas (its obviously based on Javas class and object system), but it does have constraints, it does have bindings (not as sophisticated as yours, but they exist and quite useful in practice). It has the scene graph, it handles contextual styling via CSS. It has its layout components, and GUI components. It even has 3D ;). I will say about the bindings that when the graph gets large it can be fun to try to keep in your head, and, unfortunately, there's no real way to visualize it. So, when something changes (or changes in a way you don't like), it can be an endeavor to source the change and navigate the relationships. The primary reason I mention this is just to lift it up as an example of many of the concepts you're discussing, but in "production" code, used by many, for quite some time. There may be insights there that can be mined as to possibly decisions that were made that you could apply (or not) to your work. Are the limitations of JFX done by design? Limited by Java? Limited by performance? Limited by "haven't got to it yet"? I don't know, but, anyway, just something you may want to study a little. I wish you luck on your project!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nailuj 4y ago

I admire your bravery for even trying to tackle this. Your rant about Emacs spoke to my soul. It's such a pain to use, but nothing else even comes close to playing the same game. I've been mulling over similar thoughts for years and there's clearly some space in the overlap between Emacs, Excel, Smalltalk and web browsers for a true power user computer interface. I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure.

some-mthfka 4y ago
Thanks : ) I will do my best to deliver.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

missed opportunity in ANT not being called aint, imo.

some-mthfka 4y ago
Ha, maybe : )

vindarel 4y ago

It was unclear to me, but some code was written. https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure#org63e88da https://project-mage.org/the-power-of-structure#org63e88da > Fern is the most technical section of the bunch. Perhaps that's because much of it is implemented already (KR, constraints, basic geometry, and linear algebra). and it doesn't do everything from zero, but is somehow based on Garnet > Fern is a spiritual successor to Garnet, a Common Lisp project for building graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Garnet originated at CMU in 1987 and became unmaintained in 1994. It's a great toolkit which was used for many research projects, some of which are still active. https://project-mage.org/Code https://project-mage.org/Code with some unit tests. This makes me want to explore more. But what does the code do? An exercise for the reader.

some-mthfka 4y ago
The linear-algebra provides a usability layer to April (an APL compiler). The geometry is just geometry with intersections (Its pretty cool in that it has planes, infinite sections, etc). Then there's KR with formulas thrown out and the constraint solver right from multi-garnet. Some utils. It's a start. You are right, I will update that page with more explanations on the particular subsystems.
herewulf 4y ago
I'm looking forward to seeing this appear on Savannah with a corresponding mailing list. Or maybe on Sourcehut? Since the author did leave this tidbit on the Code page: > As for Savannah being not entirely modern, well, I like the fact that it has a mailing list.
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Thanks for mentioning Sourcehut, somehow is just didn't come up when I was researching the mailing list options. So far, looks like it has a really streamlined interface and is meant to be integrated with the mailing list workflow, which I didn't quite see on Savannah.

JonChesterfield 4y ago

Flexibility interacts poorly with composability. When everything is specialised at the whim of the developer, tying different pieces together is difficult. A lot of the rigidity in programming languages is there because it gives programmers (and programs) common ground to work from. Flexibility usually interacts poorly with performance as well. Specialisation to a domain is usually faster and can be dramatically faster, but the plumbing that makes the specialisation possible has a cost everywhere. I'm curious whether lisp's macros are sufficient to splice together dissimilar code and provide the domain specific optimisations one would want to eliminate the plumbing overhead. I would expect not but it'll be interesting to be proven wrong. It's interesting that you're starting with the user interface instead of the sufficiently smart compiler. "I'll rebuild the world in lisp" projects sometimes (usually?) stall in the first stage of writing their compiler. I think it's quite encouraging that you're building on an existing language implementation. That would be a lot to build in five years. Good luck and happy hacking.

selestify 4y ago
Do you have examples of other "rebuild the world in lisp" projects? I'd be curious to see how and why historical attempts have foundered
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  Not great examples. Hazy memories of readme files for projects that sound interesting but fizzle out, sometimes decades ago. Emacs is probably a success story in that genre. It's possible to use it as the first process booted iiuc. I certainly have days where it's the only process I run after gnome has booted. Guix has replaced a lot of Linux userspace infra with scheme. Successfully as far as I can tell. I think there are (non-emacs...) operating systems in various states of progress written in lisp. Sometimes one finds a compiler written in lisp which doesn't have a runtime in C. Jitawa, Maru are the only two I know of. All the others I've looked at seem to be built on top of C. I think they're both finished/abandoned. My rebuild everything project is still in the better compiler phase so I might be projecting. Hopefully I'll remember better anecdotes later.

esrh 4y ago

I feel like your campaign would benefit from explaining a little bit about who you are, what you've written before, and why we should believe you can actually accomplish this (understandably big project). People like to feel like they're paying a person, not an idea...

some-mthfka 4y ago
Haha, alright. I have a github profile https://github.com/some-mthfka https://github.com/some-mthfka I am not particularly proud of most of those projects. Many of them were strictly done for fun. Some of them I did because I didn't know any better. The most sophisticated project I did was a game. You can grab it here for free: https://ottrta.itch.io/ottrta https://ottrta.itch.io/ottrta I don't promise it will bring you any joy, though. It was written in C++ and there's no code and there's only Windows binaries. Sorry, it was a few years back that I have published it. But, easily, that was the most interesting project I did, and the only usable one I have ever delivered. Otherwise, I am just some motherfucker (you guessed it). But you know what I believe? If you can think it, you can make it... That's all I want to say.
llanowarelves 4y ago
The other way around is more meritocratic (avoid cult of personality or credentialism). Yeah good if it includes portfolio etc

some-mthfka 4y ago

I can't edit the top post, as it was posted a few days back, and the thread has resurfaced. Currently, I am preparing an "elevator pitch" (as a few people have suggested me do), and I hope to publish it in a few hours. So, if the "Power of Structure" article is too long to consume and you just want to get the central idea, there will be such a summary soon. Also: the project needs funding. I will work on it regardless, but it will be an awful lot easier for me to get this done with some help from the community. Please, see https://www.patreon.com/projectmage https://www.patreon.com/projectmage for the details. Thank you.

ephaeton 4y ago
your elevator pitch still assumes quite a slow elevator doing quite a long ride...
- some-mthfka 4y ago
  Time is going to get by whether we like it or not. Here it is, by the way: https://project-mage.org/elevator https://project-mage.org/elevator
  - ephaeton 4y ago
    What I was getting at is that IMO you failed to boil down the essence of the proposal to a length that could be called 'elevator pitch'. By the time you start preaching the essence, everybody's arrived at their floor already.
    - some-mthfka 4y ago
      Oh, boy, how did I miss that one... heh. You have a point there, I have thrown in a TLDR.

jmercouris 4y ago

Good luck!

some-mthfka 4y ago
Hey, thanks, I have recognized your nick, nyxt is a cool project : )

guestbest 4y ago

Could all this be done in a smalltalk environment like squeak? I was wondering because I am modestly proficient in ObjC

some-mthfka 4y ago
Absolutely, it's image-based. I have considered Smalltalk, but I like macros a bit too much. I am pretty sure CL code will have better performance too, but don't quote me on this. A point worth making: if I were to do it in Smalltalk, I would choose the standardized one, as the most stable one. Stability is pretty important for a project like this, as you would imagine.
- guestbest 4y ago
  I think you mean you like emacs but got hit by autocorrect. I think the key is to duplicate a mid nineties office suit that is hackable with a programmers IDE thrown in. Something like AppleWorks or MS Works with a database that is universal across all the documents in the suite with structures that allow reuse
  - MonkeyClub 4y ago
    I think he meant Common Lisp macros, a powerful feature of the language (and missing from Smalltalk) that allows one to easily write code that writes code.
    - guestbest 4y ago
      Are macros performant enough to allow a power user to replace a scripting language like elisp for a long file of strings, which if I remember correctly was the main issue with using emacs over clisp, unstructured strings.
      - kagevf 4y ago
        Common Lisp macro expansion happens at compile time, so they wouldn't affect runtime performance.

nathell 4y ago

Me: this task is big, I’m not at all sure whether it’ll take a week or two, let’s better subdivide it into subtasks and estimate each one in turn This guy: I am pretty sure I can get done in ~5 years Seriously, though, fingers crossed! I no longer use CL professionally, but it will always have a dedicated spot in my heart. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this.

PurpleRamen 4y ago
Planing long and talking big is simple, because you don't need to face the harsh reality of the actual challenge. You just define some goal, assume it's working and call it done. But when you plan short, you are already in front of the problems, and see the cracks, and must build your plan around them. This is a bit similar to how everyone can build and promise some elaborated framework, but still fails on the small important parts. So not planing big, might be actual a hint that you are just more based in reality, than in wishful thinking. Which can be seen as good.

yewenjie 4y ago

It makes me sad to see these kinds of efforts in 2023. It just seems very likely that we will have various advancements in AI (for example Hey GitHub) for input methods/ text-editing before this reaches to an MVP stage. While even 5 years ago I would choose Emacs and split ergonomic keyboards over any other cool new solution, I feel like recent developments in AI are just too good.

brabel 4y ago
How exactly do you expect advancements in AI to make this kind of project redundant?
- yewenjie 4y ago
  It's not about making it fully redundant, but more about taking away a good chunk of the critical mass of users. If you could manipulate code by just voice or if you can write entire programs by natural language descriptions, would you really need a very capable and extensible text editor most of the time? Just for context, I'm an Emacs user for almost my entire programming career. And I enjoy crafting my Emacs for speed and efficiency.

woolion 4y ago

Just a few additional comments from our last exchange, based on https://project-mage.org/elevator https://project-mage.org/elevator. I prefer this elevator pitch because it gives some insight on how to proceed, beyond the stylistic choices. (If not a rant, it's a mixed bag of all I could think about the subject, since I never really exchanged about these ideas, so I'm interested in your thoughts as well.) The example of splitting "Hello world" into a list of words is a pretty bad example; structure as in list of words is something that text editors manage well (delete word, inner, etc). It contrasts with syntactic information that gives you structure that expands the range of what your editor can do. If you know something is a noun, you can give only a list of nouns to replace them, and any replace would be able to ignore any verb that is written the same way (I'm not sure what IDE that does scoped replace manages variables shadowing correctly, but this is something you should be able to do with structure). The idea of recursive, specialized micro-editors sounds like a real good idea. There should also probably be a way to specify that something is an encoding of a structure. For example, escaped shell commands, or SQL written as strings (not everything has DSLs, and even then it would still be useful). Ironically the delta diff program would correctly highlight syntax of SQL strings because it only analyzes the text, as opposed to most IDEs. There is also some prior art in the field, which reminds me of [0]. I'm currently working on knowledge management, which I think you have to split in different subfields; there's a great deal of overlap with project and document management, yet these would be mainly distinct workflows. I think logseq [1] and org-roam [2] tick all boxes for knowledge management, strictly speaking, but other tools are needed nonetheless. (digression: If you split it into plenty of different subsystems with another query system on top of it, you might just call your knowledge management a computer and the shell that querying tool. The issue you might have is that every program has its own API, so interfacing requires a custom facade, unless you directly write/eval shell commands.) There was another idea between code editing and knowledge management, called literate programming, which had a fairly high profile advocate (Donald Knuth). The idea would be to explain the code in the way that made sense for humans, and have the system (something in between the text and compiler, if not the compiler itself) assemble these blocks in 'computer order' for execution. He explicitly said that literate programming is not 'documented code', which is what people usually understand by it, but does not represent any paradigm shift. There's the Leo editor [3] that took some ideas from it, but I think it's also something that never really took off. Again, good luck etc. [0] https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2014/an_editor_for_composed_programs.html https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2014/an_editor_for_composed_pr... [1] https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/logseq/logseq [2] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-ui https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam-ui [3] https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/ https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor/

erremerre 4y ago

As a user that is annoyed but some of the things you mention. Will I require to learn Common Lisp to use project-mage?

some-mthfka 4y ago
The thing about power-user software is that you can customize and package it to the point where it's indistinguishable from any other software, a polished end-user experience -- the user accepts the workflow of the given configuration and rolls with it, without ever touching the config. That's how some people use Emacs -- they just learn the bindings of the default distribution. But, for Emacs, there are also some distributions like Doom Emacs and such. They are just different user-friendly distros. What's more, if you have good GUI capabilities (which Mage will have), you could build visual user interfaces for configuration (I don't plan to make such UIs btw, but someone with a good-enough UI sense and interest in this stuff could attempt it at some point, I guess). If all you do is stick to some distro with some visual config tool, then you won't even have to know it's common lisp (unless some error is signalled and the interactive debugger pops up).

EEMac 4y ago

Someone says: "I'm making a new OS/desktop environment/text editor that works for power users." I hear: "I'm making this for me." There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Many powerful tools came about because people didn't like the way the old one worked.