Dreaming the future of software; Project Editor ECMAScript 2015; Reformed Smalltalker JavaScript historian dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114… @allenwb@mastodon.social
Sherwood Oregon USA
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Reader’s of our HOPL JavaScript paper should known that in the PDF version of the paper, almost all of the 509 cited references include archival links to original documents. Locating and archiving primary source material was an important part of the project.
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Unfortunately, the references listing on the JACMPL landing page for the paper doesn’t include active links. You need to download the PDF or use the ACM eReader get get clickable links.
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In support of the JavaScript paper I also created the “ECMAScript Archives”. Lot’s of the references point there but the archive also has lot of primary source material that didn’t get referenced in the paper.
ecma-international.org/archi…
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Languages covered by HOPL-4 papers: APL, C++, Closure, Fortran parallelism, D, Emacs Lisp, F#, Groovy, Hygienic Macros (Scheme), JavaScript, LabVIEW, Logo. MATLAB, Objective-C, Oz, R, Smalltalk, ML, Verilog
dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4…
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A HOPL must read for Smalltalkers is Dan Ingalls’ “The evolution of Smalltalk: from Smalltalk-72 through Squeak”.
A very personal history from the person who built them. Lots of new info.
dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3…
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HOPL proceedings includes the definitive copy of “JavaScript: The First 20 Years” by me and @BrendanEich. Differs from preprint in minor corrections and formatting changes—plus a bonus surprise. Preprint has been downloaded over 20000 times since March.
dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3…
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The HOPL-4 issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages is now online. Nineteen long meticulously researched open access papers on the history of important programming languages and technologies.
dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2020/4…
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The JS engine used is based upon the Nombas ScriptEase engine. This was a ES1 level embedded implementation that was a follow-on to Nombas' earlier Cmm (C minus minus) product.
brent-noorda.com/nombas/hist…
More JWST scripting in arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514…
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Allen Wirfs-Brock retweeted
This product pitch is bat shit crazy:
"5GBioShield restores coherence of the geometry of the atoms, which allows a perfect induction for life forces, by (re-) creating a cardiac coherence, via plasmic support and interactivity. It emits a large number of life force frequencies."
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“Delegation Is Inheritance”
Lynn Andrea Stein
OOPSLA’87
dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3…
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Grab your favorite intoxicant and partake of Ward's only slightly cryptic vision
Allen's commercial history of Smalltalk ends with a list of all of the ways it succeeded. In 25 more cryptic paragraphs I've written my own history as it bears on the future I seek. Here, for insiders who understand Smalltalk's influence on wiki: ward.asia.wiki.org/are-we-a-…
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I finally finished writing my response to Gilad's post.
The Rise and Fall of Commercial Smalltalk
wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/…
cc/@Gilad_Bracha
Ok, now I'm going to have to blog my perspective on this—it may take a day two. I agree with a lot of what you say, but not everything and parts of the story are missing. Ideally, HOPL would have had a "History of Commercial Smalltalk" paper but I had other fish to fry.
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Many of the foundation technologies of the personal computing era were motivated as steps towards the vision captured in this 1972 Alan Kay sketch.
What's a sketch that captures a compelling positive vision for the next 30 years of our digitally enhanced lives?
ALT Two kids outside on grass using Alan Kay’s Dynabooks
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Allen Wirfs-Brock retweeted
I agree. Once we get into the mindset of any programming paradigm we almost immediately get caught up in working around its shortcomings. This sets us off on this mini-game and we lose sight of the big picture. Hence infinite discussions around static typing.
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In the 1970–80s, Smalltalk was an excellent language/environment for "inventing the future". It was less successful for deploying that future.🤷♂️
From a programming perspective, what do we need today in order to invent the next radically better computing future.
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some observations on the downfall of commercial Smalltalk in 1996
I would say the that web browsers were the black swan. ST venders were (over) focused on enterprise fat clients and suddenly web thin clients were the hot new technology. ST also not well positioned at that time for a server role.
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