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UsesThis: Rob Pike

rob.pike.usesthis.com

111–120 of 192 posts

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#111
Using ssh, screen, and a prgmr instance, I can access my stuff and have the same state for almost all of my dev work anywhere I can use a chrome browser with the ssh plugin or any ssh terminal app. That is pretty close to what he's talking about I suppose. As of now my iphone, ipad, and laptop can all jump on my little instance and I'm good to go.

That being said, I don't think going 100% cloud is for everybody yet, but we're getting closer.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#112
post #42

At the risk of causing a flamewar, it sounds like he wants Microsoft surface. It has all of those attributes when backed by SkyDrive apart from the fact you can't roll it up.

Can you go to any other Microsoft Surface and see exactly what you saw on your own, including (but not limited to) your programs, data, and configuration/profile? Also, will the state of that other Microsoft Surface be exactly what yours was when you left it?

That is, will your browser window located at (314, 159) with 6 tabs open and an HN post written in tab #2 appear on this other Microsoft Surface exactly as you left it on your own?

If not, then the Microsoft Surface may not fit the bill. This is what you get with Plan 9 and a shared file server.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#113
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You answered most of the question I came here to ask. How about chording though? I'm under the impression that there are actions that are triggered by all three mouse buttons simultaneously. I'm hoping to give acme a serious try (I have it installed), but I need to be sure I won't have to start using a three button mouse rather than whatever is provided by my system.

I think you will have an easier time learning the environment if you use a 3-button mouse, but it's not a requirement. I spend some entire days in acme on a MacBook Air, and the keyboard modifiers and %-C, %-V, %-X keyboard shortcuts on the Mac work well for me.

Agreed, as acme makes much better sense when you're equipped with a 3-button mouse.

For anyone interested: You may want to purchase an HP DY651A. It's an affordable 3-button optical USB mouse (and, yes, it's a real 3-button one).

http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product.asp?sku=2545791

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#114
I dream of Rob's dream setup as well. I suspect many people do. But I hope it shouldn't be too hard to make it a reality.

A smart phone which is always connected to remote storage (the cost could be a problem here?), and how about an electronic paper keyboard which rolls up to the size of a pen, that's somehow attached to or part of the phone.

Sit down somewhere, connect, unroll the keyboard, and there is your computing environment.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#115
post #3

I want no local storage anywhere near me other than maybe caches. No disks, no state, my world entirely in the network. Storage needs to be backed up and maintained, which should be someone else's problem, one I'm happy to pay to have them solve. Also, storage on one machine means that machine is different from another machine. I'm always shocked that this hasn't happened faster. I've expected Dropbox, Amazon, Google…

But Google has moved into that space! The general populace just didn't care too much.[1] Chromebooks do exactly what he's describing right off the bat. Every Chromebook you own dies in a fire? Unbox a new one, boot up, everything is identical. -------------------- [1] I think part of the reason for this is that just as nobody wants to think about things like death, NOBODY wants to think about data loss and prevention…

I think the Chromebook missed the boat for consumers. If it had a 128GB SSD drive that automatically synched to Google Drive, then it would useful. Now it just doesn't work for photo, video, and music editing, as well as HD movie viewing on the road.

In its current configuration, it's an anemic iPad with a keyboard.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#116
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use acme with a MacBook. First of all Cmd-x, Cmd-c and Cmd-v works. Second, Cmd and Option with the mousepad gives you clicks on buttons 2 and 3. Still I prefer to have a mouse when I am working on larger texts because it is so much easier to do text rearrangement with a mouse. A correctly set up acme on a mac is surprisingly effective.

You answered most of the question I came here to ask. How about chording though? I'm under the impression that there are actions that are triggered by all three mouse buttons simultaneously. I'm hoping to give acme a serious try (I have it installed), but I need to be sure I won't have to start using a three button mouse rather than whatever is provided by my system.

As Russ (rsc) says, it is not a requirement, but it is easier in my opinion. There are two common operation classes: sweeping while a button is held down and chording invocation. Sweeping is easy, as soon as you learn to hold down a key while sweeping.

Chording is mostly used - except for one specific chord which isn't extremely common to use - for Cut/Copy/Paste. And you already have that on the Cmd-bindings, so they are not that needed.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#117
post #48

The whole "everything in the cloud", "let someone else worry about storage" view, at least the way he promotes them, are more like VCS than let's say Git (or pick another DVCS)... you have a conceptual "central" point of failure, even if this "point" is a network of servers distributed around the world. I want STORAGE ON EVERY DEVICE (not volatile!), and and automatic system to sync it with all my other devices, WITH…

This basically describes my use of Dropbox. Anything important to me that's not code is stored in Dropbox. Every computer I have dropbox on and which has 100GB free, has a copy of those files so if Dropbox vanished, I still have a replicated copy of my files on one of my machines.

I never have to backup those files because they're replicated to any running machine with Dropbox installed. One of those machines has my dropbox share on a Drobo, so I'd need a catastrophic failure of my Drobo disks, Dropbox and my laptop in order to lose those files.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#118
post #19

"The terminal was a computer but we didn't compute on it; computing was done in the computer center. The terminal, even though it had a nice color screen and mouse and network and all that, was just a portal to the real computers in the back. When I left work and went home, I could pick up where I left off, pretty much. My dream setup would drop the "pretty much" qualification from that." It exists! It's called a sun…

Does Sun Ray make a phone?

Of course I'm not serious, but the Sunray is one stack of technology that offers stateful session management, not a system for using the same computing environment on whatever hardware you happen to have at hand.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#120

    My dream setup, then, is a computing world where I don't have 
    to carry at least three computers - laptop, tablet, phone, not 
    even counting cameras and iPod and other oddments - around 
    with me in order to function in the modern world. The world 
    should provide me my computing environment and maintain it for 
    me and make it available everywhere. If this were done right, 
    my life would become much simpler and so could yours.
Wow that sounds like a dream!
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