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That's pretty much the thesis of Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" talk. It's here, for all who have missed it: http://worrydream.com/dbx/ http://worry

by jowiar 13y ago

That's pretty much the thesis of Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" talk. It's here, for all who have missed it: http://worrydream.com/dbx/ http://worrydream.com/dbx/

k__ 13y ago
Good talk. I had all this stuff in the first chapter(the history) of my HCI-course at University. So, luckily, the younger programmers learn about stuff that already has been there, back in the days. But I was baffled by what bad stuff must have happened to the world, that we ended up where we are now and not where we should have been.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  > But I was baffled by what bad stuff must have happened to the world, that we ended up where we are now and not where we should have been. UNIX spread into the enterprise world.
  - k__ 13y ago
    What is so bad ab out Unix and what would be an alternative?
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      A world of command line interfaces and TTY text editors, instead of the powerful interactive GUI world Xerox PARC systems had.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        The shell is worlds more powerful than the GUI (or CUI), because things in the shell trivially compose.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        Except Xerox PARC systems also had a shell in the form of REPL and live coding. The UNIX shell is quite primitive by comparison.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        That's all stuff we have now. "The UNIX shell is quite primitive by comparison." I don't believe that's still the case (and hasn't been for some while). If you believe it is, rather than just making assertions please explain what you think is missing from bash in screen in urxvt.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        - bash is just one of many possibilities, so bash != UNIX shell. It is not available by default in all UNIX systems - bash is not a REPL with support for live coding. - as consequence of the last point, bash cannot provide graphical output and respective manipulation of system data structures Writing data to /proc to alter the OS behavior, is pretty basic compared with changing OS behaviour with a "doit" message on a expression block. EDIT: For better understanding, imagine using something like Mathematica as an OS shell.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        You're being argumentative instead of informative or useful. "bash is just one of many possibilities, so bash != UNIX shell. It is not available by default in all UNIX systems" Bash is one example of a modern UNIX shell. It is not the only example - there are some that are more advanced in some ways, and some that are less advanced in some ways. I wasn't saying "BASH IS ALL UNIX", I was picking a specific setup as a point of comparison. "bash is not a REPL with support for live coding." What are attributes of a REPL which you see bash as lacking? Clearly, it Reads, Evaluates, and Prints. If you just object to the particular language, fine, there are certainly things to object to there - though I think it's pretty great as UI. It's certainly atrocious when you try building anything large out of it. "as consequence of the last point, bash cannot provide graphical output and respective manipulation of system data structures" That's mostly false, which you touch on immediately following. 'Writing data to /proc to alter the OS behavior, is pretty basic' It can get arbitrarily sophisticated, but... 'compared with changing OS behaviour with a "doit" message on a expression block.' I don't know what this means, please elaborate. "For better understanding, imagine using something like Mathematica as an OS shell." There's too many things that can mean for it to aid my understanding much. Do you mostly refer to the ability to embed graphics in the interactive session while retaining a scrolling log? or are there other relevant attributes I'm not following?
lomnakkus 13y ago
There's no doubt Bret Victor has many interesting ideas, but I thought this post[1] had some interesting counterpoints to his general thrust. [1] http://www.evanmiller.org/dont-kill-math.html http://www.evanmiller.org/dont-kill-math.html

by jowiar 13y ago

That's pretty much the thesis of Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" talk. It's here, for all who have missed it: http://worrydream.com/dbx/ http://worrydream.com/dbx/

k__ 13y ago

Good talk. I had all this stuff in the first chapter(the history) of my HCI-course at University. So, luckily, the younger programmers learn about stuff that already has been there, back in the days. But I was baffled by what bad stuff must have happened to the world, that we ended up where we are now and not where we should have been.

pjmlp 13y ago
> But I was baffled by what bad stuff must have happened to the world, that we ended up where we are now and not where we should have been. UNIX spread into the enterprise world.
- k__ 13y ago
  What is so bad ab out Unix and what would be an alternative?
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    A world of command line interfaces and TTY text editors, instead of the powerful interactive GUI world Xerox PARC systems had.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      The shell is worlds more powerful than the GUI (or CUI), because things in the shell trivially compose.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        Except Xerox PARC systems also had a shell in the form of REPL and live coding. The UNIX shell is quite primitive by comparison.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        That's all stuff we have now. "The UNIX shell is quite primitive by comparison." I don't believe that's still the case (and hasn't been for some while). If you believe it is, rather than just making assertions please explain what you think is missing from bash in screen in urxvt.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        - bash is just one of many possibilities, so bash != UNIX shell. It is not available by default in all UNIX systems - bash is not a REPL with support for live coding. - as consequence of the last point, bash cannot provide graphical output and respective manipulation of system data structures Writing data to /proc to alter the OS behavior, is pretty basic compared with changing OS behaviour with a "doit" message on a expression block. EDIT: For better understanding, imagine using something like Mathematica as an OS shell.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        You're being argumentative instead of informative or useful. "bash is just one of many possibilities, so bash != UNIX shell. It is not available by default in all UNIX systems" Bash is one example of a modern UNIX shell. It is not the only example - there are some that are more advanced in some ways, and some that are less advanced in some ways. I wasn't saying "BASH IS ALL UNIX", I was picking a specific setup as a point of comparison. "bash is not a REPL with support for live coding." What are attributes of a REPL which you see bash as lacking? Clearly, it Reads, Evaluates, and Prints. If you just object to the particular language, fine, there are certainly things to object to there - though I think it's pretty great as UI. It's certainly atrocious when you try building anything large out of it. "as consequence of the last point, bash cannot provide graphical output and respective manipulation of system data structures" That's mostly false, which you touch on immediately following. 'Writing data to /proc to alter the OS behavior, is pretty basic' It can get arbitrarily sophisticated, but... 'compared with changing OS behaviour with a "doit" message on a expression block.' I don't know what this means, please elaborate. "For better understanding, imagine using something like Mathematica as an OS shell." There's too many things that can mean for it to aid my understanding much. Do you mostly refer to the ability to embed graphics in the interactive session while retaining a scrolling log? or are there other relevant attributes I'm not following?

lomnakkus 13y ago

There's no doubt Bret Victor has many interesting ideas, but I thought this post[1] had some interesting counterpoints to his general thrust. [1] http://www.evanmiller.org/dont-kill-math.html http://www.evanmiller.org/dont-kill-math.html