← Back to context

Comment by stcredzero

13 years ago 

    - Smallest unit of code is the function.
    - Able to get instant feedback on code changes.
    - Multiple editors with just one function in it. Show code
      in an "area of concern" not just in a file.
    - The coding environment can show also results, app 
      windows, graphics, other tools.
    - Can save the configuration of the above.

Smalltalkers have been doing this in commercial projects since the 80's. If only we could have communicated about this as well as Mr. Granger.

EDIT - Also:

    - You should never have to look for documentation
    - Files are not the best representation of code, 
      just a convenient serialization.
    - Editors can be anywhere and show you anything - not just text.
    - Trying is encouraged - changes produce instaneous results
    - We can shine some light on related bits of code

Things like this were happening in Smalltalk environments since the 80's. The first and the last points above were satisfied by lightning fast "senders" and "implementers" searches.

37 comments

stcredzero

Reply
gfodor  13 years ago

Of course this comment was inevitable. If Smalltalkers really believe their environment is the right way to code, their attitude should not be one of "we did this first, meh" but instead be "here's what we did right, here's what we did wrong. heed the lessons of history and good luck, you are on a mission from God."

I think with the proper care and nurturing, we could be at the beginning of a renaissance where many of the great ideas of the 60s and 70s that have been isolated to a small group of people (who are aging rapidly) are being rediscovered and reimagined by this generation. This is happening in no small part due to Rich Hickey and the Clojure community's unbelievable foresight in developing Clojure and ClojureScript in just the right way that it balances these pure, beautiful ideas with pragmatism in a way that makes them irresistible.

Those who lived through the heyday of Xerox PARC, the AI lab, the lisp machines and Smalltalk should see this as an opportunity to help make sure things don't go off the rails this time. Otherwise, we may end up back here again in 25 years with the C++ and MySQL of the future installed in our cybernetic implants.

I can already point to projects that are invisibly pushing us towards another deep, sticky, next-generation tarpit, and people are diving in because it's not yet recognizable as such. (I won't name names!) Lets try to make it so this time around we truly realize the dreams of computation by encouraging people who are building elegant, beautiful things for the modern era, no matter how much the ideas therein have been tried before.

gecko  13 years ago

Yes, but our code was entirely in these utterly unusable changeset files that couldn't work nicely with the version control that everyone else in the entire world was using; his version still uses files under the hood. There's a team that's trying to back Monticello with Git, I believe by saving each method into its own file in part of a Git source tree; that looks promising as a compromise.

roguecoder  13 years ago

We also had Virtual Machines with snapshots and rollbacks doing the things VMWare is now pushing so very hard.

I have missed those tools for the past 13 years, since I left the language. The idea that I might get those tools back, in a language that also supports all the emacs-or-gtfo coders, is like promising me a perpetual motion machine. I will believe it when I see it, and until then it will taunt me in my dreams.

mgunes  13 years ago

Field (http://openendedgroup.com/field) is a modern programming environment that embraces most (if not all) of these principles.

  • msutherl  13 years ago

    As always, the multi-media programming environments are miles ahead and nobody knows about them. Field is amazing. Max/MSP, Pd, et al. are a different paradigm altogether, but have had live editing, documentation a click away, etc. and have been in heavy use for 20+ years.

    • dkersten  13 years ago

      I've been using Max/MSP lately and while I find the language itself lacking (one example of something I wish I could do is nested lists), the editor is amazing. The live programming is ahead of any normal REPL I've used and the debugger is pretty cool too.

      If it had a few extra features it would make it pretty close to my ideal programming environment: a way of (temporarily) disabling selected code; a unit testing mechanism and a way of extracting selected code to a unit test; a visual code diff tool; git integration (especially branches)

jfno67  13 years ago

I immediately thought of Visual Age for Smalltalk when I saw this, but having been done is no reason to not try again.

michaelfeathers  13 years ago

True, Smalltalkers were there first. The thing I like.. the further enhancement here.. is the UI. No more tiles and windows.

kristianp  13 years ago

what smalltalk didn't quite do is the instantaneous view of the results of your code changes. Seeing the result of your changes in Light Table is like updating a cell in a spreadsheet. Smalltalk (I'm guessing), would involve switching to the executing window or hitting a play/continue button. A subtle difference, but it takes the immediacy to the next level.