scroot

32 ms·

301.
by scroot 7y ago
It is absolutely nuts that we don't have a greater diversity of computing platforms (as we did in 80s 90s) considering we have such widely adopted standards today that overcome the "compatibility" problems. There's ferti
302.
by scroot 7y ago
> I'm not convinced an OS or programming language or database needs millions of lines of code. I think this (implicit in most cases) belief that OSes are inherently complex and therefore require mounds of code is a result of our cur
303.
by scroot 7y ago
Yes, I caught the drift of the article. I think a better title might have been "Teletype Emulation Strategies to Break Your Dependence on the GUI"
304.
by scroot 7y ago
"Slide rules to replace your dependence on calculators"
305.
by scroot 7y ago
"The foxes have assured us that they will limit their consumption in the hen house for a ten year period"
306.
by scroot 7y ago
> If the technology represents a big advantage to a group of people, history shows that is what eventually happens. It depends on what you mean by "advantage" and "group of people" here. An "advantage" is mo
307.
by scroot 7y ago
> Is there an example in history of civilization turning its collective back on some scientific pursuit in fear of its potentially negative consequences? It seems close to impossible. First we should ask: is this a "scientific"
308.
by scroot 7y ago
> What's a good book for Simula or Smalltalk? For Smalltalk, just start with the Blue Book. It's so well written and complete -- and most of it still alive in current implementations -- that it's the best place to start.
309.
by scroot 7y ago
> A quantum computer is not like a nuclear weapon: it’s not going to directly kill anybody This is, of course, not the only problem with nuclear weapons (and by extension the science and technology that created them). First, there are se
310.
by scroot 7y ago
How big is your operating system?
311.
by scroot 7y ago
It's even better. If it's just making stuff, you don't even need `BubbleMachine` if you have the `Bubbles` base class. You can add creation method on the class side of `Bubbles` like so: `Bubbles class >> #newGum` ^
312.
by scroot 7y ago
Oberon is a gift to the computing world. It is one of the few examples of a top-to-bottom design of a full computing system (The Smalltalk Blue Book is also like this, sans the hardware). I think the world is ready, or almost ready, for a c
313.
by scroot 7y ago
This is (sort of) one of the sticking points people like Kay and especially Papert made. Because all computing is interactive, it is always an ongoing part of a more general "learning process." There are many types of learners and
314.
by scroot 7y ago
> Sometimes I wonder if the people of the 1960s (i.e the people who came up with lisp, multics, unix) had the right idea: to use a computer you should program it. It's the right attitude to take, but let's try to provide some d
315.
by scroot 7y ago
> Personally I believe the desktop operating system of the future will be one that draws from some ideas from the past that have never been fully realized. > from the classic Mac era (I admit, as much as I like Mac OS X, I believe th
316.
by scroot 7y ago
I would like to do this for my next project, but unfortunately appearance matters to clients. It is far easier to make something that looks "modern" using something like Electron than it is any of the open source Smalltalk systems
317.
by scroot 7y ago
> Graphical programming is a popular example: the author pooh-poohs the terminal, for example. But text is the densest way we can precisely convey information; if we're trying to scale to the next system size, cutting information de
318.
by scroot 7y ago
I think about this a lot. But then I remember that to do so is to project "business as usual" into the future -- the very trend that is spurring on ecological catastrophe and likely all kinds of social collapse. I'm afraid re
319.
by scroot 7y ago
Also the book is hilariously written. Very dry humor throughout. Definitely an interesting read.
320.
by scroot 7y ago
"The music is not in the piano"
321.
by scroot 7y ago
It's the neoliberal Panglossian response -- the best of all possible worlds!
322.
by scroot 7y ago
Can't deny that there are some industries where more hours are better and that beyond the 4-5 hour range they don't suffer from diminishing returns. But I'd point to David Graeber here and just say that there seem to be a lot
323.
by scroot 7y ago
The future struggle for people in these kinds of jobs is to get the wider culture to admit to itself that the latter 4 hours are unnecessary and even detrimental to workers.
324.
by scroot 7y ago
Smalltalk and Oberon especially are complete or near complete systems: they are described from top to bottom, and in some cases described in themselves. Oberon is interesting because the 2013 book goes much further than any recent system in
325.
by scroot 7y ago
> The "smartphone" is essentially a small "glass TTY", rather than personal computer in the '80s sense. We now have a generation or two that completely missed this era, and, worse, might be uninterested in the hi
326.
by scroot 7y ago
It takes a lot of brains, time, money, failure, and just plain screwing around to come up with something like Hypercard or even the earliest personal computing systems. FOSS doesn't allow the time and money part, which is why they are
327.
by scroot 7y ago
> I guess Excel is todays substitute? Yes. And perhaps the last major remnant of this once prominent philosophy on what personal computing should be about.
328.
by scroot 7y ago
> I saw that they made heavy use of XCMDs and XFCNs -- custom extensions you had to write in a compiled language (Pascal? C?). At that point, why would you bother with Hypercard at all? Hey, don't forget about shareware culture! You
329.
by scroot 7y ago
> Do these requirements really come from the users? Or do they, in fact, come mainly from tech people? I think a lot of them come from the "expectations" about computing created by the world of web applications. And those requi
330.
by scroot 7y ago
I do a lot of freelance and I can't tell you how many businesses I've worked with who had some need that was just a smidge more than their current software would allow. If there was something in between using an interface and lear

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