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The Web Is Becoming Smalltalk

zacharyvoase.com

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Re: The Web Is Becoming Smalltalk

#5

Post by breckinloggins »

Chris Granger's Light Table is also trying to do it. Of course, Bret Victor's talk breathed new life into this whole thing. But everything old is new again.

People want to build software from a small kernel that scaffolds itself. They want to immediately switch between "testing the app" mode and "building the app" mode. They want something more than a text file, a tool pipeline, and an executable at the other end. On the other hand, they don't want their code to turn into an opaque binary blob that can't be diffed, can't be read by text tools, and can't be shared with people who don't feel like using your sweet "Invented on Principle" tool.

It feels like we're converging on the ideal solution, but it's happening more slowly than I think many of us predicted.

Re: The Web Is Becoming Smalltalk

#7

Post by chewxy »

It only makes sense if you talk about utility webapps (like twitter). Not everything is a webapp though. Wikipedia for example, is just a display of documents. Should it become a fancy webapp? I don't see much benefit in it.

The old page concept is plenty fine in many contexts IMO.

Re: The Web Is Becoming Smalltalk

#9

Post by vincie »

gregmuellegger wrote: post #4

So you want your live editing beeing persistent? What about testing? I think you should first write a test that fails before attempting to fix it...

Test your code in a Workspace before editing your classes. Depends on the complexity of the change you are making of course. If it is complex, clone the image and test on the clone.
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