Reuben, Your response is enlightening in many ways. I think it re-inforces for me how computer science is really more of an "automation pop culture." As a society, we've become engrossed with product yet we spend only a few minutes at most usually playing around with the artefacts produced - forming surface judgements and rarely if ever deconstructing them in order to understand their inner environment. As an academic discipline, I fear we've become entrenched in dogma around the accidental complexities we now consider "core" to our understanding of a problem - a running executable, bits of ASCII sigels organized in "files".
Every year, a thread similar to this pops up and I've never really known how to respond. Now, I'd like to propose that if we are indeed to be considered a "science of computation" then we should do as other scientific disciplines and try to reproduce the findings. After all, given that more or less robust implementations of OMeta exist, if I truly understand, for example, "nothing" the low level machine language, then I should be able to spend an afternoon with OMeta and this year's report's appendix and have a crude "nothing" interpreter. The same could be said about most parts of the system. If I can't reproduce this work then either: - conceptual bits are missing - I've found a better way to do it - I don't really yet understand the concept In all cases, sharing THAT experience here is more constructive for everyone. Build you're own interpretation of nothing or build a set of Nile programs as you understand Nile to work and put it on git hub. I think the one thing that I might like to see is a screen capture of a live essay to make sure my understanding is in line. But then, I can build my own live essay in HTML / JS or something else. I truly believe that the goals of VPRI are better served by NOT handing out executable forms of their findings but rather disseminating the concepts of "executable Maths" shawn On Jan 20, 2012, at 5:52 PM, Reuben Thomas wrote: > I have just skimmed VPRI's 2011 report; lots of interesting stuff > there. The ironies of a working system that the rest of us can only > view in snapshot form grow ever-stronger: the constant references to > active documents are infuriating. The audience would like to see the > active document, but instead we only get a printout. It's as if, > waiting for a new film, we got only reviews of trailers rather than > the trailers themselves. > > The irony is then compounded by a code listing at the end of the > document (hint: a URL is shorter and actually useful; this is not the > 1980s). > > And then just when we thought it was going to end, the agony > continues: you've pushed the deadline back a year. > > I wish you all a joyful and productive 2012; unlike many projects, > it's clear that with this one the question is not whether what is > finally released will be worth the wait, it's whether it'll ever > actually be released. > > You do shoot yourselves in the foot at one point: "The Web should have > used HyperCard as its model, and the web designers made a terrible > mistake by not doing so." Yes, but the web shipped and revolutionised > the world; meanwhile, you lot have shipped stuff that, at best, like > Smalltalk, has inspired revolutions at one remove. Many of the lessons > of your work are decades old and still not widely learned. Contrast > with Steve Jobs, who spun an ounce of invention into a mile of > innovation, by combining a desire for better computing with the > understanding that without taking people with you, your ideas will die > with you. It's a shame and an embarrassment that to the world at large > he's the gold standard. > > Please, no more deadline extensions. Whatever you have by the end of > this year will unquestionably be worth releasing, for all its > imperfections. It's high time to stop inventing the future and start > investing it. > > -- > http://rrt.sc3d.org > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
