4 ms·

Show HN: A Lisp-based in-browser toy operating system

156 points by alnis 15y ago

SeoxyS 15y ago
I don't really know what to say, except I love you, and this is awesome!
dullcrisp 15y ago
This looks really cool but I can't get the REPL to accept keyboard input in Firefox.
- abdullahkhalids 15y ago
  yea! Why does it not work in firefox?
- alnis 15y ago
  Hmm, you're right - I should have done more cross-browser testing. It does work fine in the latest Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE 8+. Unfortunately, I haven't worked with Firefox enough to be able to figure out what the problem is. I'll keep looking into it, but if anybody can figure this out, I will be much indebted to them.
  - owyn 15y ago
    This is cool! But the command line is pretty inoperative in FF (11.0 mac). I tried to take a look at it but it's not throwing any useful errors. I did notice that you are using jquery-terminal version 0.4.7 and there is a more recent 0.4.11 so you could try that? If that doesn't fix it, I will try and get it running on my local box to add some debugging and investigate asap.
- alnis 15y ago
  Update: Ok, looks like I fixed it. Firefox wasn't liking $('body').css('display', 'none'), as it turns out.
bane 15y ago
Very timely considering this just hit the front page http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783021
agumonkey 15y ago
Outing an in-browser lisp OS on April 1st is what I call timing.
minikomi 15y ago
Very very fun indeed. The examples are a really nice introduction too!
eli_gottlieb 15y ago
/sigh. If it runs in the browser, it's not an operating system. Nice April 1 joke.
- unimpressive 15y ago
  >If it runs in the browser, it's not an operating system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis How so?
  - Dn_Ab 15y ago
    I fail to pick up the relation. The Church Turing thesis is an unproveable statement arguing that a turing machine can compute every computable function. It also notes the equivalent ability in mu recursive functions and the lambda calculus.
    - unimpressive 15y ago
      Now correct me if I'm wrong. But "Every computable function" includes another Turing machine. If browser developers are insistent on turning the web browser into a sort of web virtual machine; then it stands to reason that a "operating system" running in the browser is just as legitimate as one in virtualbox or similar software. Is the concept ridiculous? Probably. But time transforms all things. Many things that were once ridiculous are no longer so. I'm eager to see how things on this line of thought turn out.
      - Dn_Ab 15y ago
        I am saying that the church turing thesis is not a fact or theorem. It is an unprovable hypothesis, a belief whose inclusion in a deduction does not add any more to it unless the receiving party also agrees with it. The other part is that the notion of an operating system is not typically tied to a turing machine. An operating system is essentially a set of libraries for any language with appropriate bindings. The language being an abstraction of the underlying machine. To show an equivalence between an OS and browser you list the properties of and operations on a browser and that of an operating system and show there is an isomorphism from one to the other. Anyways I agree with your conclusion, just not with your argument route. As browsers increase in power they will be indistinguishable from the OS in terms of functionality they expose to the consuming language. The current OSs approach from the other end.
reginaldo 15y ago
It is awesome... When I read operating system I immediately started looking for processes and, lo and behold, there are processes [1]. And they work very intuitively too... [1] https://github.com/AlexNisnevich/ECMAchine#processes https://github.com/AlexNisnevich/ECMAchine#processes
gosub 15y ago
Two additions would be really cool (I'm thinking about adding them myself): 1) Expose the environment as virtual folders (like /proc in linux). So that an object in memory coincides with a file in a directory, that in turn would work like a package. For example "ls" would live under /env/fs/ls (and /env/ls would be in "path" for symbol evaluation). 2) Expose the dom, always as files (/env/dom). Make it a plugin. Add a lisp repl to every webpage.
- alnis 15y ago
  These are both great ideas. Unfortunately I don't have time to work on this myself, but I'd love to see them implemented (especialy #2). I encourage you to submit them as issues on github so that they're not forgotten.

156 points by alnis 15y ago

SeoxyS 15y ago

I don't really know what to say, except I love you, and this is awesome!

dullcrisp 15y ago

This looks really cool but I can't get the REPL to accept keyboard input in Firefox.

abdullahkhalids 15y ago
yea! Why does it not work in firefox?
alnis 15y ago
Hmm, you're right - I should have done more cross-browser testing. It does work fine in the latest Chrome, Opera, Safari, and IE 8+. Unfortunately, I haven't worked with Firefox enough to be able to figure out what the problem is. I'll keep looking into it, but if anybody can figure this out, I will be much indebted to them.
- owyn 15y ago
  This is cool! But the command line is pretty inoperative in FF (11.0 mac). I tried to take a look at it but it's not throwing any useful errors. I did notice that you are using jquery-terminal version 0.4.7 and there is a more recent 0.4.11 so you could try that? If that doesn't fix it, I will try and get it running on my local box to add some debugging and investigate asap.
alnis 15y ago
Update: Ok, looks like I fixed it. Firefox wasn't liking $('body').css('display', 'none'), as it turns out.

bane 15y ago

Very timely considering this just hit the front page http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783021 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783021

agumonkey 15y ago

Outing an in-browser lisp OS on April 1st is what I call timing.

minikomi 15y ago

Very very fun indeed. The examples are a really nice introduction too!

eli_gottlieb 15y ago

/sigh. If it runs in the browser, it's not an operating system. Nice April 1 joke.

unimpressive 15y ago
>If it runs in the browser, it's not an operating system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis How so?
- Dn_Ab 15y ago
  I fail to pick up the relation. The Church Turing thesis is an unproveable statement arguing that a turing machine can compute every computable function. It also notes the equivalent ability in mu recursive functions and the lambda calculus.
  - unimpressive 15y ago
    Now correct me if I'm wrong. But "Every computable function" includes another Turing machine. If browser developers are insistent on turning the web browser into a sort of web virtual machine; then it stands to reason that a "operating system" running in the browser is just as legitimate as one in virtualbox or similar software. Is the concept ridiculous? Probably. But time transforms all things. Many things that were once ridiculous are no longer so. I'm eager to see how things on this line of thought turn out.
    - Dn_Ab 15y ago
      I am saying that the church turing thesis is not a fact or theorem. It is an unprovable hypothesis, a belief whose inclusion in a deduction does not add any more to it unless the receiving party also agrees with it. The other part is that the notion of an operating system is not typically tied to a turing machine. An operating system is essentially a set of libraries for any language with appropriate bindings. The language being an abstraction of the underlying machine. To show an equivalence between an OS and browser you list the properties of and operations on a browser and that of an operating system and show there is an isomorphism from one to the other. Anyways I agree with your conclusion, just not with your argument route. As browsers increase in power they will be indistinguishable from the OS in terms of functionality they expose to the consuming language. The current OSs approach from the other end.

reginaldo 15y ago

It is awesome... When I read operating system I immediately started looking for processes and, lo and behold, there are processes [1]. And they work very intuitively too... [1] https://github.com/AlexNisnevich/ECMAchine#processes https://github.com/AlexNisnevich/ECMAchine#processes

gosub 15y ago

Two additions would be really cool (I'm thinking about adding them myself): 1) Expose the environment as virtual folders (like /proc in linux). So that an object in memory coincides with a file in a directory, that in turn would work like a package. For example "ls" would live under /env/fs/ls (and /env/ls would be in "path" for symbol evaluation). 2) Expose the dom, always as files (/env/dom). Make it a plugin. Add a lisp repl to every webpage.

alnis 15y ago
These are both great ideas. Unfortunately I don't have time to work on this myself, but I'd love to see them implemented (especialy #2). I encourage you to submit them as issues on github so that they're not forgotten.