21–30 of 58 posts
It's always interesting to look back on those days at Apple when they were so innovative and took so many risks when it came to software. Technologies like OpenDoc, Cyberdog, Hypercard, AppleScript, Taligent were really quite unique.
What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…
This is what Lighttable aimed to do - create an extensible, abstracted code editor for many languages. See also CodeBubbles (Java) and most Smalltalk environments. http://lighttable.com/2012/04/12/light-table-a-new-ide-conce...
I have looked into this. It is kind of criminal that for most real world languages (Ruby[1], C[2] etc), it's not possible to just define a grammar and throw it at a standard parser generator for them - they generally have one or two quirks which make this infeasible.
In my ideal alternate universe it would be considered unthinkable to publish a language without also publishing a grammar in a standard format for said language, which can then be plugged into your favourite text/semantic/tree editor. Our tools should dictate our languages, not the other way around.
[1] http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to-par...
What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it be 'projectional editing'? All you see in Apple Dylan is a bunch of browsers/editors, conceptually similar to what a Smalltalk or Interlisp IDE did, but with a different UI. As you can see in the screen shots, it presented Dylan source code, but through a bunch of browsers, folding editors and navigation tools. There is no 'intent' captured.
I'm not intimately familiar with Apple Dylan but at least based on the information on that page it very much reminded my of intentional software. "This also illustrates a key feature of the Apple Dylan TR: every part of your source code was not just text in a text file, it was a separate object in an object database. This gave the IDE incredible power, because meta-data about each object could be maintained to facili…
That would make any VCS- and annotation-aware IDE an intentional-programming tool. I don't think that's really the case and it wasn't for the Dylan environment either.
What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…
This is what Lighttable aimed to do - create an extensible, abstracted code editor for many languages. See also CodeBubbles (Java) and most Smalltalk environments. http://lighttable.com/2012/04/12/light-table-a-new-ide-conce...
It was kind of neat, but also led to a lot of clicking around. It's one of those Holy Grail ideas people have been talking about forever, but I'm not convinced it's actually that superior given all of the ecosystem downsides there are to moving away from text.
I think you probably could do something better than text files, but it has to be a lot better to get over the chasm of losing all of your familiar editors, command line text utilities like grep, easy copy/paste, etc.
Text is a lowest common denominator medium. People get hung up on the "lowest" part, but the "common" part is pretty damn convenient.
Some days, I still miss OS 8.
I wonder when Microsoft will do any work on the VBA editor. It's not like VBA is going away. Office users still write new VBA every day. They need it.
It's always interesting to look back on those days at Apple when they were so innovative and took so many risks when it came to software. Technologies like OpenDoc, Cyberdog, Hypercard, AppleScript, Taligent were really quite unique.
https://root.cern.ch/TaligentDocs/TaligentOnline/DocumentRoo...
As for Hypercard... it wasn't Apple's innovation but Bill Atkinson's (he designed and wrote the whole thing). Once Bill left (6 months later), no one else was really able to manage the codebase and it rotted for a decade or two until it was finally cancelled.
What I like the most is the abstraction-away from plaintext source files. Imagine a C and C++ IDE that hid the (often ugly) source files from you put only exposed individual function definitions - it could automatically keep header files in-sync, for example, and automatically place each free-function or class member in the right file without manual refactoring. (I still think it's outrageous that C is still a single…
But as to the single feature you mentioned, see for example Code Bubbles:
It's funny because this is basically the VBA editor. You have a tree on the left with classes and modules, then in the main pane you have a drop down at the top to select functions and the text editor (if configured that way) will show a single function. I wonder when Microsoft will do any work on the VBA editor. It's not like VBA is going away. Office users still write new VBA every day. They need it.