[Self-interest] slow systems (was: OurSelf trial nowwithout invite!)

Paul Chapman paul at igblan.free-online.co.uk
Thu Dec 3 15:46:10 UTC 2020


David & David,

> no machine can figure out what I need to be able to see as well as I can

Because I didn’t know in advance what my workflow would look like, I deliberately designed DE so that any of the six windows could display any of the available views. This would be my approach in a non-overlapping Smalltalk environment, which at least partially answers your objection.

> Morphic/Self was maybe two hours better at the 3am test than any of the "modern" IDEs

3am? That’s my primetime. :)

> Our debugger reified each frame, so you could see as many as you wanted to, at once. Could yank them out, rearrange them, make a column morph of just the slots you wanted to see.

This approach looks great, but I still say it can be achieved with non-overlapping windows. Yes, allow lots of windows. But also allow the user to design and save bespoke non-overlapping layouts which suit her workflow. 

> Is the I-APL code available anywhere, such as github?

Sadly, no. It might be on a buried CD-ROM somewhere in my flat. If I ever get around to sorting out my archives, I might find it.

I first encountered APL when searching through wastebaskets in room 404 (!) of the Electrical Engineering building at Imperial College, London, for poorly overprinted passwords. It was initially indecipherable, since there were no keywords. So I’d enjoy posting my source code without syntax or semantic definitions to similarly confuse modern programmers. :)

I can, however, point you to a copy of my only published paper, on the development of I-APL, delivered at APL88 in Sydney, which I retrieved from Sci-Hub recently because of course it’s otherwise behind a paywall.

http://igblan.co.uk/i-apl/paper.pdf

It calls out some of the claims in my last post as falsehoods! Memory is sometimes unreliable.

Cheers, Paul
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