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This is a sad discussion -- both the essay and here. Nobody has bothered to look back in history. "You need to be able to inspect and traverse objects, all obj

This is a sad discussion -- both the essay and here. Nobody has bothered to look back in history. "You need to be able to inspect and traverse objects, all objects." Smalltalk? Lisp Machines? "There also must be a culture where proper extensions are regularly provided on objects. Powerful tools are built on powerful paradigms, and enabling a paradigm isn’t the same thing as actually implementing it across a fully developed programming environment." The MOP? Are we doomed to keep on asking these questions again and again? An IT curriculum should include at least one unit where students are required to study the history of these things and write an essay.

Jtsummers 13y ago
Lisp and Smalltalk are not on the standard curriculum at most US schools. I know that GT used to offer an OO course (speaking of abandoning history, can't view old course webpages past 2008, and new ones are apparently hidden behind a student only portal) which used Squeak, it was a co-requisite of Software Engineering (circa 2003, don't know how it's changed since because I can't get to the pages). I wasn't introduced to lisp until I took a special topics course that used Common Lisp for AI in grad school. Ok, technically I used scheme before then in a survey of programming languages course, but 2 weeks exposure hardly counts. For various reasons I left GT about that time, and finished up elsewhere. I do know that in 2002 (2001?) they introduced scheme for CS 1301 (whatever the number changed to), but dropped it for python later (cheating scandal that year, something like 200 students caught in CS 1 and CS 2). Speaking of, that PL course was probably the closest to a CS history course that I ever took. The only other courses that came close were ones where I deliberately sought out papers on algorithms (AI, graphics) that had been developed in the 70s/80s relevant to projects I was working on. Other students just brute forced their solutions taking advantage of the much faster hardware available at the time.
- vithlani 13y ago
  Ah right, you were luckier then I was. I took an AI course at uni so that I could see some Lisp in action (and learn AI) but the bastard lecturers (2 of them) change it to ... JAVA! While still using the Norvig textbook that had the algorithms in LISP-y pseudocode. And with lead lecturer being a Vietnamese PhD who couldn't speak enough English to explain the most basic concept. 2/3 of the class flunked. Way to go on your initiative to look for papers and context around your other courses! I bet the perspective it gave you has helped.
ianbicking 13y ago
Smalltalk, what of it? I've never used a Lisp Machine, but I did go through a Smalltalk phase. Smalltalk doesn't identify between safe and unsafe method calls, for instance. So sure, you can safely get the underlying instance variables of an object, just like Python's obj.__dict__. But you can't traverse into external structures, you can't use the standard getter methods since you don't know what's a getter and what causes modifications. And the meta-object protocol is exactly what I'm talking about: extensibility without ubiquitous useful patterns. The MOP might (maybe) be helpful in implementing a prototype, but it wouldn't by itself create a system where goal-oriented traversal and search across an application was possible.
- vithlani 13y ago
  Assuming your concern is across a single/uniform language: How about Smalltalk as a basis or the foundation of what you want? If somebody pursues the approach, how hard would it be to develop a layer that takes care of the safe-unsafe issue? MOP: extensibility without ubiquitous useful patterns. My experience says that "ubiquitous patterns" manifest when you use a technology against real problems. So use the MOP to tackle several problems and then watch the patterns emerge. If 1/25th of the raw brain power had been applied to abominations like PHP had been diverted to using Lisp and exploring the meta patterns in there.... my gut says your blog post would have been about some cool framework you wrote to solve the problem ;) On the other hand, if your concern crosses the single language barrier (you mention LINQ) then what sits at the top of Object Model A and Object Model B? It is some Meta Model or a specific library framework that understands both. Back to the meta again, back to all those leaves on a branch of history left unexplored. What do we have instead? Brainpower, time, money and youth/a generation being devoted to the "hip hop VM" at Facebook. Given your prolific programming output (thank you for pip and virtualenv, big admirer) it is no wonder that you ponder these issues and wish to pursue something higher up. What I was trying to get at is that, respectfully, you are not the first and that there might be some lessons in the history of our profession that we could learn from and use as a basis for progress. Regarding ZeroVM, I am a bit confused as to what exactly "moving apps to data means". If I have a 20 GB log file to process living on a filesystem, how do I "move" my Python processor script to it?

Jtsummers 13y ago

Lisp and Smalltalk are not on the standard curriculum at most US schools. I know that GT used to offer an OO course (speaking of abandoning history, can't view old course webpages past 2008, and new ones are apparently hidden behind a student only portal) which used Squeak, it was a co-requisite of Software Engineering (circa 2003, don't know how it's changed since because I can't get to the pages). I wasn't introduced to lisp until I took a special topics course that used Common Lisp for AI in grad school. Ok, technically I used scheme before then in a survey of programming languages course, but 2 weeks exposure hardly counts. For various reasons I left GT about that time, and finished up elsewhere. I do know that in 2002 (2001?) they introduced scheme for CS 1301 (whatever the number changed to), but dropped it for python later (cheating scandal that year, something like 200 students caught in CS 1 and CS 2). Speaking of, that PL course was probably the closest to a CS history course that I ever took. The only other courses that came close were ones where I deliberately sought out papers on algorithms (AI, graphics) that had been developed in the 70s/80s relevant to projects I was working on. Other students just brute forced their solutions taking advantage of the much faster hardware available at the time.

vithlani 13y ago
Ah right, you were luckier then I was. I took an AI course at uni so that I could see some Lisp in action (and learn AI) but the bastard lecturers (2 of them) change it to ... JAVA! While still using the Norvig textbook that had the algorithms in LISP-y pseudocode. And with lead lecturer being a Vietnamese PhD who couldn't speak enough English to explain the most basic concept. 2/3 of the class flunked. Way to go on your initiative to look for papers and context around your other courses! I bet the perspective it gave you has helped.

ianbicking 13y ago

Smalltalk, what of it? I've never used a Lisp Machine, but I did go through a Smalltalk phase. Smalltalk doesn't identify between safe and unsafe method calls, for instance. So sure, you can safely get the underlying instance variables of an object, just like Python's obj.__dict__. But you can't traverse into external structures, you can't use the standard getter methods since you don't know what's a getter and what causes modifications. And the meta-object protocol is exactly what I'm talking about: extensibility without ubiquitous useful patterns. The MOP might (maybe) be helpful in implementing a prototype, but it wouldn't by itself create a system where goal-oriented traversal and search across an application was possible.

vithlani 13y ago
Assuming your concern is across a single/uniform language: How about Smalltalk as a basis or the foundation of what you want? If somebody pursues the approach, how hard would it be to develop a layer that takes care of the safe-unsafe issue? MOP: extensibility without ubiquitous useful patterns. My experience says that "ubiquitous patterns" manifest when you use a technology against real problems. So use the MOP to tackle several problems and then watch the patterns emerge. If 1/25th of the raw brain power had been applied to abominations like PHP had been diverted to using Lisp and exploring the meta patterns in there.... my gut says your blog post would have been about some cool framework you wrote to solve the problem ;) On the other hand, if your concern crosses the single language barrier (you mention LINQ) then what sits at the top of Object Model A and Object Model B? It is some Meta Model or a specific library framework that understands both. Back to the meta again, back to all those leaves on a branch of history left unexplored. What do we have instead? Brainpower, time, money and youth/a generation being devoted to the "hip hop VM" at Facebook. Given your prolific programming output (thank you for pip and virtualenv, big admirer) it is no wonder that you ponder these issues and wish to pursue something higher up. What I was trying to get at is that, respectfully, you are not the first and that there might be some lessons in the history of our profession that we could learn from and use as a basis for progress. Regarding ZeroVM, I am a bit confused as to what exactly "moving apps to data means". If I have a 20 GB log file to process living on a filesystem, how do I "move" my Python processor script to it?