scroot

89 ms·

421.
by scroot 8y ago
> it's never going to be powerful enough to enlighten the surrounding culture But one of Kay's central arguments is that literacy (meaning reading/writing media, especially print) did precisely what you are saying isn&#x27
422.
by scroot 8y ago
Can't you already do this with an OODB? I'm asking sincerely, since I have never quite understood why OODBs aren't used more often.
423.
by scroot 8y ago
Check out Lively4 [1] and see what you think. It's the fourth incarnation of dan ingalls' LivelyWeb concept. [1] https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/lively4-core/start.html [2] https://github.co
424.
by scroot 8y ago
Yeah anyone reading this who is curious should really check out the Blue Book, it is fantastic. There is a follow up book called "Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice" that discusses some of those early VM implementation
425.
by scroot 8y ago
When Pharo and Squeak people do VM development, they do it inside a special image equipped with the VMMaker package [1]. What this package has is both "slang" -- which can easily compile to C -- and an emulator running the develop
426.
by scroot 8y ago
For anyone reading this, Reed also worked with Kay on Croquet (an interesting project in its own right) which implemented this object-based idea of "time" via a framework called TeaTime [1]. You can try out Croquet for yourself in
427.
by scroot 8y ago
I have been thinking along similar lines, so if you ever start anything up please get in touch. I think in order to pull this off one needs to build a new kind of personal computer from the ground up with specific end designs in mind. I hav
428.
by scroot 8y ago
> it doesn't seems there are massive interest for something like that either It's been a long enough time that most people don't even know that "Hypercard like things" are even possible, or what they mean, or how
429.
by scroot 8y ago
The view of computing you are criticizing in fact doesn't miss your point. It attacks it straight on. What does "programming" mean? Insofar as it involves people using Algol inspired languages -- with some features here and t
430.
by scroot 8y ago
He has provided historical examples that trend in that direction. The point is: industry stopped looking into this (and an implicit point is also that investigating these things is no longer well funded).
431.
by scroot 8y ago
Gets right to the heart of the matter. A clear and well-written article.
432.
by scroot 8y ago
Perhaps the computing experience should be precisely the more holistic one. Hypercard is exceptional for many reasons: new users can do a lot without writing code, but can easily "see" how it works by inspecting things (in a langu
433.
by scroot 8y ago
Don't forget the laser printer, postscript, etc
434.
by scroot 8y ago
Pharo is what I want my personal computer to be like.
435.
by scroot 8y ago
The next-gen graphics system for Pharo, called Bloc, is still under development but making good progress. If you can find some of the demos [1] you'll see that things like text rendering are vastly improved. [1] https://twit
436.
by scroot 8y ago
Do you think in a real workplace people are going to constantly bring this up with their managers?
437.
by scroot 8y ago
> McDonalds doesn't need my subsidy. No, but the person to makes and hands over your coffee does. > I'm old enough to remember a time that giving extra money to someone for handing you a cup of coffee would be thought absurd
438.
by scroot 8y ago
One could argue that things have regressed: https://twitter.com/ecgade/status/1029795513514774529
439.
by scroot 8y ago
I run Hypercard in sheepshaver and every once in a while show it to younger developers I meet. They are always blown away.
440.
by scroot 8y ago
100%. Whenever I say I miss Hypercard, people find imitations but that's not the point. Hypercard was holistically perfect for a personal computer of the mid-90s. Having an equivalent today would be beyond mere imitation. It would have
441.
by scroot 8y ago
Excel is programming a computer. So was Hypercard. Any UX that reduces user "savvy" rather than enhacing it can hardly be said to be improved. A large part of the developer community has a very static idea of what a computer can b
442.
by scroot 8y ago
Complexity can't be the only answer (and there is evidence it can be tamed anyway). Over the past two decades developer culture and wider technological culture has conditioned regular people to be passive consumers of computing, rather
443.
by scroot 8y ago
End user "programming" systems are precisely what personal computing was supposed to be about. Aside from spreadsheets and maybe a couple of other things (hangers-on from the business world), that line of inquiry and use has been
444.
by scroot 8y ago
I likely got the "parking lot" impression from Alex Gibney's Zero Days, but it's been a few years since that came out.
445.
by scroot 8y ago
This is how stuxnet got into the Natanz facility I think. They left a usb stick in the parking lot. Someone picked it up, plugged it in.
446.
by scroot 8y ago
If you compare the ease of "authoring" in the top hypermedia environment of its day (Hypercard) with doing the same today (the web) it's plain as day that things have regressed. Here is a straight up comparison someone made i
447.
by scroot 8y ago
I believe that some Smalltalkers were able to turn objects into things that were "like actors" when implementing Croquet / OpenCobalt [1]. These systems relied upon creating their own sense of "time" via a protocol
448.
by scroot 8y ago
This is summed up in Wittgenstein's Tractatus as: "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
449.
by scroot 8y ago
> I fear it would turn out equivalent. One argument against this is that the web today is not set up for easy authoring by end users (in fact, it's gotten more difficult to "make websites" as the web has progressed). But t
450.
by scroot 8y ago
Check out https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg

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