> I also learned a tremendous amount about an important but obscure part of the history of computing, a history that I think is actually a vision of what our future is.
Reading the rant from John Rose in the preface to THE UNIX-HATERS Handbook [1] was pretty eye-opening to me. The world that John is complaining about is the world that I've spent many years living in, quite happily too!
How is it that we lost the ability to fix the code to a program that crashed, then continue running the program from where it left off? Why aren't all of our tools self-documenting? Etc, etc.
I've spent quite a bit of time wondering why we've "lost" so much. I think that part of the problem is that technology was developed a rate faster than what most people could keep up with. I remember that early Macs had a game to teach people how to use the mouse! Also, before the internet, it was hard for to transmit software and information about it.
So, the way I view the world of technology now is that we haven't "lost" anything, we're just catching up with the past. And doing a better job of it too!
In many ways, I think that the capabilities of "HTML5" (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) are converging on the capabilities of the X Window system. The main difference that I can see is that "HTML5" requires about 2-4 inches of book to understand while the X Windows System required a couple of feet of book to understand.
I'm not sure if my view of us just needing to catch up with the past is correct, but it's been pretty useful to me. Now, instead of bemoaning things that are lost, I look forward to seeing those things again, in a form that is easier to understand. More "pure" if you will.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can edit any part of my OS or applications, live, while they are running. I'm looking forward to being able to fix a program that has crashed and then have it continue running. I enjoy using interactive debuggers and I'm looking forward to seeing them in more languages. I love using REPLs to learn new languages and for doing quick prototyping.
That's why I'm watching JavaScript with interest. Many people are doing things with JavaScript that we were doing with Lisp Machines before. Some people are able to edit their server-side JavaScript live. Many of us know that our web browser has a built-in JavaScript REPL, some of us use that to fix webpages that other people wrote.
In short. After spending a lot of time reading, talking about, and using Lisp Machines, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of what William Gibson meant when he said "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."
NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS:
- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming.
- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML/CSS for rendering.
- used PostScript data instead of XML/JSON for data representation.
* a doc browser, which integrates with said editor
* a high performance compiler, which integrates with the above two
* a debugger that can step through OS code as easily as program code
* the ability to stop a program midexecution, change it, and continue from where you stopped.
Python is a script interpreter running on UNIX. Nothing more, nothing less. It's terribly misguided to compare it to a LispM. You don't even know what you're missing.
The basic support for said functionality is all there in Python, minus the operating system (although I'm sure someone could write a Python OS for fun). You just need 3rd-party tools to make use of it.
Could you expand on that as well?