scroot

69 ms·

361.
by scroot 7y ago
> i've heard the smalltalkers catch some flak about not actually writing an os because there was (apparently) the equivalent of exec(), no fork() In the Smalltalk world, processes are just instances of the class `Process` and `Proce
362.
by scroot 7y ago
Dan Ingalls wrote similarly in his Design Principles Behind Smalltalk [1], noting that "An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one." [1] https://www.cs
363.
by scroot 7y ago
One of the things that we sacrificed was what today we would call "end-user programmability" but which should really just be called "using a personal computer." Hypercard was a UI builder, a way for regular people to pro
364.
by scroot 7y ago
> Squeak Smalltalk uses Morphic, although its descendents (e.g. Pharo and Newspeak) seem to have replaced it (I'm not sure of their paradigm though) Pharo is still using Morphic, though there is a new graphics layer called Bloc (vec
365.
by scroot 7y ago
Very true. The Terminal is like cave painting or cuneiform pressed into clay with reeds. It will last forever.
366.
by scroot 8y ago
> My problem with this vision of OOP is that it would seem to take a great deal more support from the programming environment to make it work, compared to FP One way to think about this is that there isn't a difference between your
367.
by scroot 8y ago
How is there not a single mention of Hypercard?
368.
by scroot 8y ago
A nitpick? On Hackernews?
369.
by scroot 8y ago
It's all made possible because of the protocol which is a kind of message passing. If a node somewhere on the Internet doesn't receive a packet for whatever reason, the whole network doesn't come crashing down.
370.
by scroot 8y ago
In practice, Smalltalk methods tend to be very short. Having too many "callbacks" (really it's just asking Block objects for their value; the "lambdas" here are just objects too) is an issue of how you are designing
371.
by scroot 8y ago
> It's a horrible programming model, though. We should be glad this is not how most languages work. This is not only about languages, but also environments. The argument Kay makes is that in order to make very large complex systems
372.
by scroot 8y ago
> I wonder if the OOP "style" of obfuscating program behaviour by using more code (class hierarchies, overridden functions, etc.) Class hierarchies have benefits and drawbacks, but the very idea is that they result in less code
373.
by scroot 8y ago
In most systems, try to call a method that doesn't exist on something. It will bark at you. In the types of OO systems Kay discusses, it's up to the receiver to determine whether or not to respond to a message and how to behave if
374.
by scroot 8y ago
Check out Telepharo: https://github.com/pharo-ide/TelePharo
375.
by scroot 8y ago
There is a pretty good book by Karen Armstrong called "The Great Transformation" that looks at why all of this seemed to happen around the same time across different cultures and religions.
376.
by scroot 8y ago
I don't know about the limitations of C++, but something like what you describe would happen in Smalltalk. Take for example a Canvas object and a bunch of different shape objects (square, circle, etc): "Square class" dr
377.
by scroot 8y ago
It does come from Smalltalk, which is in part why it looks so sloppy and strange in other languages (a Ruby example I saw even had an intermediary class for the visitor part, which doesn't really happen in Smalltalk). The reason to use
378.
by scroot 8y ago
The alternative is still incredibly hard!
379.
by scroot 8y ago
Don't forget spreadsheets -- the most used programming environment on the planet
380.
by scroot 8y ago
If you have the time, grab Sheepshaver and boot up the last version of Hypercard. You will see that it did a lot of things that a browser simply cannot. For example, you can copy a button from anywhere and paste it into your own stack using
381.
by scroot 8y ago
Constructionism seems to be one of Kay's sticking points -- this is one of the ways children can learn best (but what about adults?) Obviously a modern Hypercard cannot simply be a contemporary reimplementation of Hypercard, with exten
382.
by scroot 8y ago
Hypercard was a thrust in the direction of the Engelbart/Kay/Papert vision of personal computing, one where there wasn't so much of a division between "programmers" and "users" (Hypercard users were even c
383.
by scroot 8y ago
I have been trying to find out for a long time now why more people don't use object databases, so thanks for this post.
384.
by scroot 8y ago
The guy who wrote this makes software for a satellite company. He implemented the entire FFI library because he wanted to use Smalltalk instead of C in that situation.
385.
by scroot 8y ago
What you're pointing out is definitely an important contradiction. Talking about "mom and pop" shops is a bit of a distraction -- a minimum wage gives even large companies an excuse to become some of the worst offenders, whic
386.
by scroot 8y ago
The mom and pop are pushing their costs onto the rest of society, ie public money. We at least try not to let people starve in the street, and so provide government services for the poor. The VCs, for all of the faults of that system, aren
387.
by scroot 8y ago
If a company cannot afford to pay a living wage for its full time employees, is it "profitable" in any meaningful sense? The owners of that company are pushing the burden onto the rest of society.
388.
by scroot 8y ago
It's not a matter of perception. Since the recession, most of the new jobs created have been of the low/minimum and part time variety.
389.
by scroot 8y ago
Uh, have you seen what the rest of the country is like?
390.
by scroot 8y ago
> Maybe that only seems suboptimal though and a true LispOS and Smalltalk OS running on baremetal would never truly work with the general populace? Been thinking about this a lot lately. What would a regular laptop user, say, or advanced

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