Andy Bower
2012-03-21 16:31:19 UTC
Folks,
You may have seen this before but I only came across it recently:
http://instanceof.me/post/18455380137/inventing-on-principle-by-bret-victor
His idea of a moral stance is a great one but, perhaps more immediately
interesting from the Smalltalk point of view, are the code demos that
illustrate his principle of Immediate Connection.
The interesting thing for me was hearing the audience gasp and buzz when
he demonstrates various features that we've (virtually) been used to in
Smalltalk for years. Not only does he suggest the need for an "immediate
connection" but he also alludes to what is wrong with the current idea
of programming languages. Talking of the way we work now (at around 2:55):
"Most of my time is spent working in a text editor blindly, without an
immediate connection to, this thing, which is what I'm trying to make"
What Smalltalk gives us is the object-model, described on previous
occasions as a "sea of live objects", which is really the thing we're
trying to create. The program source is NOT what we are trying to make,
it is simply a temporary manifestation of it.
Nearly everyone nowadays is used to using property inspectors to
dynamically change the aspects of items in a word processor or graphics
document. Why shouldn't code just be treated the same as any other
aspect of the "thing we are trying to make"; the code editor just being
another property inspector such that any program changes are seen
immediately and dynamically? I suspect that if, every time you changed a
font in Word, you had to re-open the document to see the change, you'd
throw up your hands in horror. How then have we managed to live so long
with the ubiquitous Edit-Compile-Run cycle?
With more demonstrations like Mr Victor's maybe a few more people will
start to "get" what Smalltalkers have been beating on about for years.
Best regards
Andy Bower
You may have seen this before but I only came across it recently:
http://instanceof.me/post/18455380137/inventing-on-principle-by-bret-victor
His idea of a moral stance is a great one but, perhaps more immediately
interesting from the Smalltalk point of view, are the code demos that
illustrate his principle of Immediate Connection.
The interesting thing for me was hearing the audience gasp and buzz when
he demonstrates various features that we've (virtually) been used to in
Smalltalk for years. Not only does he suggest the need for an "immediate
connection" but he also alludes to what is wrong with the current idea
of programming languages. Talking of the way we work now (at around 2:55):
"Most of my time is spent working in a text editor blindly, without an
immediate connection to, this thing, which is what I'm trying to make"
What Smalltalk gives us is the object-model, described on previous
occasions as a "sea of live objects", which is really the thing we're
trying to create. The program source is NOT what we are trying to make,
it is simply a temporary manifestation of it.
Nearly everyone nowadays is used to using property inspectors to
dynamically change the aspects of items in a word processor or graphics
document. Why shouldn't code just be treated the same as any other
aspect of the "thing we are trying to make"; the code editor just being
another property inspector such that any program changes are seen
immediately and dynamically? I suspect that if, every time you changed a
font in Word, you had to re-open the document to see the change, you'd
throw up your hands in horror. How then have we managed to live so long
with the ubiquitous Edit-Compile-Run cycle?
With more demonstrations like Mr Victor's maybe a few more people will
start to "get" what Smalltalkers have been beating on about for years.
Best regards
Andy Bower