shalabhc

24 ms·

211.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Isn't a database global mutable state? Or a filesystem? If global, mutable state is considered problematic when programming in the small (i.e. single program), why is it unquestioned when building much larger, more complicated systems
212.
by shalabhc 9y ago
I've seen some of Bret Victor's talks but your description made it click! > the source code is not technically stored with the class object This is more of an optimization choice, perhaps? Given the link is maintained, it migh
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> It's worth noting that you then have made a "software Internet", and this can be mapped in many ways over a physical Internet. The more interesting/optimized ways to map this would be where a single object in the so
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> (except during the build process) That's the key point though. In a large scale system (think multiple systems written by multiple groups running on multiple machines) when you modify a shared data type, how do you update the syst
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> most elegant abstraction over data This may be. We should also step back consider if building functional abstractions over data is a good way for modelling all of computation itself? Or something like 'smaller virtual computer
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Thank you for taking the time to respond, and I'd really appreciate if you can clarify my follow up below too! > every thing in the system is a dynamic object -- there are no "date structures" I'm still programming in
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by shalabhc 9y ago
They're embarrassing once you realize what's been done in the past, with incredibly smaller 'stacks' in much simpler systems, producing more powerful capabilities. HTML and CSS require that a large amount of information
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by shalabhc 9y ago
You seem to be describing the ideas underlying smalltalk, which uses the word 'objects' instead of 'discrete modules'. Every piece of functionality is an object - any object can talk to any other objects, etc. If you&#x2
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> See what you think about what happens around 9:05 I saw two interesting things around 9:05. A 13 year old made an 'active essay' on the computer which contains not just text but also a dynamic interactive environment so the r
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by shalabhc 9y ago
If you want to study the ideas of the dynabook, here you go: http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-26-kay.pdf
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by shalabhc 9y ago
The article is filtered through another reporter and I didn't find specific instance of badmouthing (but my reading is also filtered through my own notion of where I think Alan Kay is coming from.) If you're interested in what Kay
222.
by shalabhc 9y ago
Take a look at mypy and pytype - there is a drive in the Python community to add a verification system to the language.
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> python is so fun is because it is slow C++ pushes you to conflate optimization with the higher level meaning of what you're trying to implement. In Python you can write the higher level meaning in a more 'pure' way, whic
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by shalabhc 9y ago
See also http://aprt.us as an interesting way to build interactive diagrams.
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Thank you for taking the time to explain. I don't use multiple cursors but now see how it might be more accessible than using regex based replace commands or macros. The key point I got was one already knows how to edit with one cursor
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by shalabhc 9y ago
You can have immediate feedback for search-and-replace without multiple cursors too, no?
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by shalabhc 9y ago
It's not about parsing being difficult or easy (e.g. you would still have to parse an abstract structure into a syntax tree specific to your language semantics). It's about making a structured form be the canonical baseline (inste
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by shalabhc 9y ago
The Ohm interactive editor is a lot of fun as well - you get real time feedback on examples as you edit your grammar. https://ohmlang.github.io/editor/
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Instead of retrofitting a structured format on top of the current text centric world, can we imagine if a structure centric world would be better? A large number of tools would exist to operate semantically on the same structured format, in
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Take a look at smalltalk where you edit the live in-memory objects directly.
231.
by shalabhc 9y ago
You should be able to type it in a 'shell', and you should be able to set it on a function/program you call from the shell. But you cant download and run program that automatically references a file by path. This system is di
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Correct - ls couldn't be a separate program - it would be replaced with a primitive that lets you explore the filesystem. The point of such a system would be that programs cannot explore or read the filesystem as there is no filesystem
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by shalabhc 9y ago
You cant have a find program because you can't discover files, you must be provided them. But you can have a `filter` program, that takes a stream of files an outputs another stream of files matching a filter. You can then pipe the out
234.
by shalabhc 9y ago
You would define rgrep as taking a stream of files. Generating the stream of files is outside the capability of any program (since we don't have `open` or even `listdir`). Instead you'd use a primitive of the storage system itse
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by shalabhc 9y ago
If command lines were built in systems designed around this principle, they would work slightly different than what we're used to. For instance, when invoking this 'program' on the command line, the system would discover it n
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by shalabhc 9y ago
SVGs might work well on the web, but fonts may work better in other contexts. For instance, to display icons in a text editor using just the standard text rendering system.
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Thanks for the link to Erik's essay - it was a great read. I like the idea of an image based system, eliminating the need for the filesystem itself. I think the 'filesystem' and 'executable-process' ideas are so pre
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by shalabhc 9y ago
Can we eliminate or reduce the need for permissions altogether? E.g. OSes have an `open()` system call, which can potentially access any part of the filesystem, and then they layer an ever growing permission system to restrict this. Can w
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by shalabhc 9y ago
I wish this was adopted more broadly, e.g. by Rust and other newer languages.
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by shalabhc 9y ago
> Strong typing I think you mean 'static' typing, not strong? Python is already strongly typed. > It's not so great when I'm trying something new and am still trying to work out if what I want to do is even possibl

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