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Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

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11–20 of 57 posts

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#12
post #5

AutoHotkey adds a malleable computing layer to Windows.

Meh, it's better than nothing. Though not a great interface or DSL.

2.0 fixes a ton of stuff over 1.0, but yeah you're not wrong.

Between custom keybinds, hot strings, and pop-up menus I have literally hundreds of tiny AHK scripts running 24/7. I'm pretty sure there's stuff I've literally forgotten is an AHK vs an actual part of Windows. It's all just ingrained in my muscle memory at this point.

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#15
post #8

Yet another one rediscovers the way Lisp machines, Smalltalk, Cedar and Oberon were envisioned, and we never really got it in mainstream computing. Nice article.

I genuinely do wonder why that has been the trajectory. When you look at the almost futuristic vision of interacting with living, programmable software objects and environments that evolve over time and you get a glimpse of it in Emacs, Pharo or Oberon (worth mentioning Free Oberon, fun to play around with https://free.oberon.org/en/ think it was on the frontpage recently), how did we go back to dead text files again?

I always have to think the "the world if" meme when I think about what would have happened if the whole Engelbart, Licklider, Alan Kay school of thought had won out

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#16

OP here. Happy to answer any questions about my post in this thread.

Out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever been a "Mac person"? I'm curious if you've ever gone down the rabbit hole on Apple's history of technologies for what I think you'd call "malleable computing" at the OS level, like Open Scripting Architecture/AppleScript and now App Intents?

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#17

OP here. Happy to answer any questions about my post in this thread.

Out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever been a "Mac person"? I'm curious if you've ever gone down the rabbit hole on Apple's history of technologies for what I think you'd call "malleable computing" at the OS level, like Open Scripting Architecture/AppleScript and now App Intents?

If you're into malleable computing you'd never have been a "Mac person"

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#18
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever been a "Mac person"? I'm curious if you've ever gone down the rabbit hole on Apple's history of technologies for what I think you'd call "malleable computing" at the OS level, like Open Scripting Architecture/AppleScript and now App Intents?

If you're into malleable computing you'd never have been a "Mac person"

How was OSA/AppleScript not an OS-level malleable computing layer?

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#19
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever been a "Mac person"? I'm curious if you've ever gone down the rabbit hole on Apple's history of technologies for what I think you'd call "malleable computing" at the OS level, like Open Scripting Architecture/AppleScript and now App Intents?

If you're into malleable computing you'd never have been a "Mac person"

Yeah, NeXTSTEP is notoriously a locked-down, untweakable OS. It's not like anyone was able to use it to program anything of consequence.

Re: Malleable computing, Emacs, and you

#20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're into malleable computing you'd never have been a "Mac person"

How was OSA/AppleScript not an OS-level malleable computing layer?

I don't know first hand of anyone who ever used it for anything. Maybe I knew the wrong Mac users (mostly teachers).
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