scroot

36 ms·

331.
by scroot 7y ago
Another thing to think about is the metaphors used. Stacks, cards, and interactive objects on cards were really good metaphors that fit holistically in the Apple personal computing systems of the late 80s/90s. You're right that a
332.
by scroot 7y ago
That's the thing. In the late 90s if I wanted to make a GUI application that could do a large share of what the overall computing system could do, I had Hypercard. And one didn't even need to study, exactly: all stacks were inspec
333.
by scroot 7y ago
It was even clear from the terminology: anyone who made stacks in Hypercard was called an "Author" -- which comprised both "developers" AND users. That naming couldn't be more to the point about the intention of the
334.
by scroot 7y ago
Yes exactly. My own take is that Apple should have made a "Hypercard"-like thing the "top layer" of a new operating system. In other words, the entire desktop/windows/buttons interface to the main OS would be i
335.
by scroot 7y ago
I doubt it. When you made Hypercard stacks you did it in Hypercard. When you make websites, you make them in ... not a web browser.
336.
by scroot 7y ago
Check out the work they are doing on glamoroustoolkit: http://gtoolkit.com
337.
by scroot 7y ago
AMPR was one of the first organizations to register with the DNS in the early 80's. It was an original player on the ARPANET before it was "the Internet." In fact, they tried to register in 1987 using their own TLD (.AMPR) be
338.
by scroot 7y ago
I once tried to find out how much some blood tests were going to cost me. This entailed a 3-hour ping-pong session between Quest Labs and my insurance company, each claiming the other would be able to tell me. Finally after reaching what so
339.
by scroot 7y ago
This must be a big part of it. Another is the kinds of computing environments that the majority of users, developers, and even CS researchers live and work inside of. For there to be truly new UIs the question of "what is symbolic repr
340.
by scroot 7y ago
This is dope -- didn't know about it, thanks
341.
by scroot 7y ago
If you haven't yet, I'd recommend reading the "Blue Book" (Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation) by Goldberg. It has a very holistic approach and, as such, is one of the most accessible and pleasant books de
342.
by scroot 7y ago
> Although it does provide shortcuts for automatically generating accessors which I don't think Smalltalk did / does. Most Smalltalk browsers do actually offer this capability
343.
by scroot 7y ago
If you look at how far a regular user could get in the 90s with Applescript, Hypercard, and the Classic Mac OS, today's systems are quite underwhelming by comparison. I have no doubt that all the Unix based systems of today are more st
344.
by scroot 7y ago
> Programmers love creating unitasker software, particularly for end users, frankly because it takes much less thought. And when they do create powerful general purpose highly flexible software, their target audience is most often other
345.
by scroot 7y ago
Smalltalk has had code versioning and sharing for a long time now (Envy, Monticello, etc). But in the past few years Git integration has really taken off. Pharo uses Iceberg to interact with git and the main image is now developed exclusive
346.
by scroot 7y ago
There are a couple of projects in the works that take an interesting approach to this. Because the image/VM is always running you can essentially "turn on" a checker that will note which classes of objects have been sent as m
347.
by scroot 7y ago
For sure!
348.
by scroot 7y ago
> If one is trying to pass a block-like object to a message that is expecting a block and which we cannot be easily sure is not dependent on other messages under obscure conditions, is it not easier to extend from / inherit whatever
349.
by scroot 7y ago
> Are there not other messages that they might depend on that would also need to be implemented? The answer to this is "maybe" but it doesn't really matter. You only need to implement the messages that will be sent by othe
350.
by scroot 7y ago
Aha interesting!
351.
by scroot 7y ago
In Smalltalk, blocks are actual objects in the system like everything else. You can send messages to them (I don't think Ruby allows this). In fact, that's the only way to get something out of a block -- send it the message #value
352.
by scroot 7y ago
Or Hypercard, which was popular among non-programmers in its day
353.
by scroot 7y ago
Could this result in moving to countries that don't have such policies, thereby allowing for increasing emissions (ie carbon tax havens)
354.
by scroot 7y ago
You choose to have a car. Your body is a given.
355.
by scroot 7y ago
Well of course they aren't running when the computer is off. And yeah, you'd need something to bootstrap the system the same way you need a bootloader
356.
by scroot 7y ago
Of course, you need some agent that can communicate with the hard disk and that knows how to manage memory. Maybe its one driver, maybe its several, but these can also just be objects. Live objects, I mean. Not just blobs of data, but actor
357.
by scroot 7y ago
I'm not sure there has to be a lower level at all, aside from asm and machine language
358.
by scroot 7y ago
Object systems
359.
by scroot 7y ago
> But if you want to help everybody, even the most nontechnical, even spreadsheets are sort of beside the point and not really what they want. Instead, making things easier to use (as Apple does) is closer to the mark. A counter to this
360.
by scroot 7y ago
Every year or so I take a look at GNUStep just to see what's going on. Crazy it hasn't taken off.

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