Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Steve Wart]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Dethe Elza  wrote:

> Glad you like it. How old is your son? Maybe we should organize a Vancouver 
> Geek Kids, or meet up at
> Maker Faire next week. Or there is this: http://www.tedxkidsbc.com/

TEDx kids looks wonderful - thanks for that link.

A Geek Kids meetup would be very popular; he's 13 and his sister is
12. They're up in Vancouver for the Summer, but unfortunately I'll be
in San Jose with only a couple of very short trips back.

We took them to the Maker's Faire in San Mateo last month and they
were thrilled, especially with the hands-on labs, but it was too much
to cover with the intense crowds and we missed a lot. The mini Faire
should be a lot more manageable. I'll pass on that info and hopefully
we can get them to go.

> I'm working to get the Arduino code merged in with the main fork. Also 
> looking at options for wrapping the webapp in a native shell using 
> Appcelerator Titanium or Mozilla Chromeless so we can access the serial port 
> from Javascript.
>

I'll have a look at the code this weekend. Other than a somewhat
obsessive use of Minecraft as social media, things are quiet here :)

Cheers,
Steve

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Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Dethe Elza]

On 2011-06-15, at 7:43 PM, Steve Wart wrote:

> I like it. My son is very keen on Scratch (although he prefers Lua
> these days), but we picked up an Arduino kit last month, and I'm
> looking forward to playing with that.

Glad you like it. How old is your son? Maybe we should organize a Vancouver 
Geek Kids, or meet up at Maker Faire next week. Or there is this: 
http://www.tedxkidsbc.com/

I'm working to get the Arduino code merged in with the main fork. Also looking 
at options for wrapping the webapp in a native shell using Appcelerator 
Titanium or Mozilla Chromeless so we can access the serial port from Javascript.

> His eyes kind of glazed over looking at the C code, as simple as it is
> for Arduino. I got the impression he was just happy to have dad
> perform magic tricks for him :-)

I understand about the magic tricks. My son wanted me to help him get 
Raphael.js to mask images with arbitrary paths tonight. Fortunately, there was 
an undocumented technique (Google saves the day!).

Besides, my eyes glaze over at C code too ;-)

--Dethe
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Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Monday 13 Jun 2011 8:47:49 PM Alan Kay wrote:
> It would be great if everyone on this list would think deeply about how to
> have  an "eternal" system, and only be amplified by it.
The picture I had in mind was a interconnection of systems that grow in an 
interdependent way by absorbing selectively from each other. This implies 
mechanisms for diffing two systems and filtering appropriate elements for 
absorption into one of the systems. While a system can be used independently 
(i.e. it has its intrinsic worth), it is capable of absorbing, adapting and 
amplifying its capabilities when plunked into a network systems.

In this scenario, diffing a system against itself along a timeline is just a 
special case. Warth's Worlds is a fascinating paper but I didn't see it 
address multiple world scenario (yet!). It is possible that my reading hasn't 
gone deep enough to realize its ramifications.

xmldiff was an injudicious analogy for a research mailing list :-(. Apologies.

Subbu

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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[BGB]

On 6/15/2011 3:22 PM, Ian Piumarta wrote:

On Jun 15, 2011, at 14:09 , BGB wrote:


http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki

description sounds like it is specific to the FoNC / VPRI projects...

Sorry about that.  I left the original main page, figuring that people would 
just start a new page and when some useful content had been accumulated we'd 
rearrange things on the main page.  Misconception corrected.


yeah, cool.

(was gone much of the day, recently got back).


I went and created this page (partly as a test):
http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki/index.php/Dynamic_typing

I generally tried to keep it fairly generic.

I opted with this for the moment, rather than describing my own stuff, 
as I am not certain the level of "project-specificness" which is 
appropriate.



or such...


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Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Steve Wart]

I like it. My son is very keen on Scratch (although he prefers Lua
these days), but we picked up an Arduino kit last month, and I'm
looking forward to playing with that.

His eyes kind of glazed over looking at the C code, as simple as it is
for Arduino. I got the impression he was just happy to have dad
perform magic tricks for him :-)

Cheers,
Steve

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Dethe Elza  wrote:
> On 2011-06-15, at 3:42 PM, Dale Schumacher wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:30 AM, Dethe Elza  wrote:
>>> In fact, I'm interested enough in the block structure visualization that 
>>> I've been porting just the blocks, without the Scratch semantics and 
>>> runtime, to the web. You can use scratch-like blocks to write and output 
>>> any language, provided a language plugin. As a demonstration, I'm writing a 
>>> language plugin for Javascript (plus Raphael, for graphics) and Martyn 
>>> Eggleton is working on a plugin for writing Arduino code. It is still early 
>>> days, very alpha, but if anyone is interested there is more here:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/wiki [info]
>>> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/ [code]
>>> https://waterbearlang.com/ [Javascript demo]
>>> http://stretch.deedah.org/waterbear/ [Arduino demo]
>>>
>>> I've been meaning to share this with the group here, but wanting to get it 
>>> roughed in a bit more, but here it is in all its half-baked glory. Feedback 
>>> highly appreciated.
>>>
>>> --Dethe
>>
>> Very cool project.  I'd like to see how easy it would be to use it for
>> Humus programs.
>
> Thanks! I don't know how easy it would be to use with Humus, but I'd be happy 
> to help explore it and find out.
>
> I'm just finishing up a couple of side projects so I can devote all my hobby 
> coding time to Waterbear. One big refactoring is going to be control of (most 
> of) the UI from a language plugin, and multiple language plugins supported 
> from the same version (right now they are separate forks).
>
> --Dethe
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Re: [fonc] Narrative Interfaces

[Alan Kay]

Great subject and looks very interesting!

Cheers,

Alan





From: C. Scott Ananian 
To: Fundamentals of New Computing 
Sent: Wed, June 15, 2011 2:44:56 PM
Subject: [fonc] Narrative Interfaces

We're having some invited talks this Friday at One Laptop per Child's
offices on "Narrative Interfaces".  Full talk description here:
  http://cananian.livejournal.com/64747.html

I've been working on building a small modular "growable" direct system
along the lines of several others discussed on this list (see
http://cananian.livejournal.com/tag/turtlescript ) -- but the focus of
these talks is going to be somewhat different: assume that we've built
such a nice transparent system.  How do we write the code walkthrough?
How do we guide learners through the edifice we've built?  How ought
we show off corners of the architecture which they might not stumble
into on their own?

Put another way: the Dynabook (and/or the Primer in Neal Stephenson's
"The Diamond Age") isn't *just* architecture.  There's some content,
too -- how ought we to write that?

Chalkboard's translation of Abelson and diSessa's Turtle Geometry book
(http://tinlizzie.org/chalkboard/#TurtleGeometryHome) is a step toward
this goal.  Interactive Fiction works such as "Inform School"
(http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/i.html#informsch) are steps toward the
same goal from a different direction.

The talks will be live-streamed and also available for download after
the event.  I hope the audience here finds the topic of interest.
  --scott

-- 
  ( http://cscott.net )

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Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Dethe Elza]

On 2011-06-15, at 3:42 PM, Dale Schumacher wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:30 AM, Dethe Elza  wrote:
>> In fact, I'm interested enough in the block structure visualization that 
>> I've been porting just the blocks, without the Scratch semantics and 
>> runtime, to the web. You can use scratch-like blocks to write and output any 
>> language, provided a language plugin. As a demonstration, I'm writing a 
>> language plugin for Javascript (plus Raphael, for graphics) and Martyn 
>> Eggleton is working on a plugin for writing Arduino code. It is still early 
>> days, very alpha, but if anyone is interested there is more here:
>> 
>> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/wiki [info]
>> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/ [code]
>> https://waterbearlang.com/ [Javascript demo]
>> http://stretch.deedah.org/waterbear/ [Arduino demo]
>> 
>> I've been meaning to share this with the group here, but wanting to get it 
>> roughed in a bit more, but here it is in all its half-baked glory. Feedback 
>> highly appreciated.
>> 
>> --Dethe
> 
> Very cool project.  I'd like to see how easy it would be to use it for
> Humus programs.

Thanks! I don't know how easy it would be to use with Humus, but I'd be happy 
to help explore it and find out.

I'm just finishing up a couple of side projects so I can devote all my hobby 
coding time to Waterbear. One big refactoring is going to be control of (most 
of) the UI from a language plugin, and multiple language plugins supported from 
the same version (right now they are separate forks).

--Dethe
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Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Dale Schumacher]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:30 AM, Dethe Elza  wrote:
> In fact, I'm interested enough in the block structure visualization that I've 
> been porting just the blocks, without the Scratch semantics and runtime, to 
> the web. You can use scratch-like blocks to write and output any language, 
> provided a language plugin. As a demonstration, I'm writing a language plugin 
> for Javascript (plus Raphael, for graphics) and Martyn Eggleton is working on 
> a plugin for writing Arduino code. It is still early days, very alpha, but if 
> anyone is interested there is more here:
>
> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/wiki [info]
> https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/ [code]
> https://waterbearlang.com/ [Javascript demo]
> http://stretch.deedah.org/waterbear/ [Arduino demo]
>
> I've been meaning to share this with the group here, but wanting to get it 
> roughed in a bit more, but here it is in all its half-baked glory. Feedback 
> highly appreciated.
>
> --Dethe

Very cool project.  I'd like to see how easy it would be to use it for
Humus programs.

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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Ian Piumarta]

On Jun 15, 2011, at 14:09 , BGB wrote:

>>> http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki
> 
> description sounds like it is specific to the FoNC / VPRI projects...

Sorry about that.  I left the original main page, figuring that people would 
just start a new page and when some useful content had been accumulated we'd 
rearrange things on the main page.  Misconception corrected.

Regards,
Ian


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Re: [fonc] Narrative Interfaces

[Dethe Elza]

On 2011-06-15, at 2:44 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:

> The talks will be live-streamed and also available for download after
> the event.  I hope the audience here finds the topic of interest.
>  --scott

Very interested, thanks for the links!

--Dethe

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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Frederick Grose]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Ian Piumarta wrote:

> Dethe,
>
> > When I go to Log in/ create account I don't see any way to actually
> create an account.
>
> Sorry about that.  I have enabled account creation.  (IIRC it was disabled
> following the vpri wiki being hacked.)
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>

The wiki software version is quite old.  I recommend that it be upgraded to
MediaWiki version 1.17 when it is released (soon).
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2011-June/037503.html

The new account spam has been a major problem recently.  I recommend that we
install the OpenID extension,
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID

and use it exclusively for new account authentication, as we have at Sugar
Labs:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?title=Special:OpenIDLogin&returnto=Special:UserLogin

(The Loginprompt system message
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/MediaWiki:Loginprompt
is modified to direct those seeking new accounts to the OpenID page.)

Existing users needn't change their accounts.


Best wishes, --Fred
(wiki.sugarlabs.org coordinator)
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[fonc] Narrative Interfaces

[C. Scott Ananian]

We're having some invited talks this Friday at One Laptop per Child's
offices on "Narrative Interfaces".  Full talk description here:
   http://cananian.livejournal.com/64747.html

I've been working on building a small modular "growable" direct system
along the lines of several others discussed on this list (see
http://cananian.livejournal.com/tag/turtlescript ) -- but the focus of
these talks is going to be somewhat different: assume that we've built
such a nice transparent system.  How do we write the code walkthrough?
 How do we guide learners through the edifice we've built?  How ought
we show off corners of the architecture which they might not stumble
into on their own?

Put another way: the Dynabook (and/or the Primer in Neal Stephenson's
"The Diamond Age") isn't *just* architecture.  There's some content,
too -- how ought we to write that?

Chalkboard's translation of Abelson and diSessa's Turtle Geometry book
(http://tinlizzie.org/chalkboard/#TurtleGeometryHome) is a step toward
this goal.  Interactive Fiction works such as "Inform School"
(http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/i.html#informsch) are steps toward the
same goal from a different direction.

The talks will be live-streamed and also available for download after
the event.  I hope the audience here finds the topic of interest.
  --scott

-- 
      ( http://cscott.net )

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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[BGB]

On 6/15/2011 9:06 AM, Dethe Elza wrote:

On 2011-06-15, at 8:55 AM, Ian Piumarta wrote:


If a wiki is the kind of "database" you had in mind, please feel free to make 
use of:

http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki

Thanks for setting this up, Ian. When I go to Log in/ create account I don't 
see any way to actually create an account. I tried both Chrome, Firefox and 
Safari on OS X.



description sounds like it is specific to the FoNC / VPRI projects...

in my case, I am working on my own technology for my own purposes, so I 
really don't know how it would fit.


FWIW, all of my VM/language stuff is generally being released under the 
MIT license (sort of... me and putting things online has been hit or 
miss, as for me going and putting in all the header comments). other 
parts of the project (mostly my 3D stuff) are likely to be proprietary 
though (me trying to devise some way to actually make an income here...).


however, I just figure ideas can be provided if/when they seem relevant.


admittedly, I sort of believe the "implementation is the thing" mindset 
to be a bit wrong, and personally believe that having (or at least 
allowing for) multiple implementations is a better policy. many people 
in FOSS land though don't really seem to believe in this, leading some 
projects to have a sort of "authority" thing going on, and the creators 
to not be open to the possibility of alternative implementations, which 
is sad...


a downside though is that the above generally requires fairly 
comprehensive documentation and standardization, otherwise one may end 
up with a mass of only partially-compatible implementations (which is 
not likely nearly as beneficial).


modularity is also good though, as personally I don't believe 
homogeneity to be a workable strategy either, and implementations need 
some room for freedom as well. hence, leading to a belief for the need 
for abstract APIs and black-boxes.


...

or such...


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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[david hussman]

I believe it is the first wiki and it was created with purpose: allow a 
community to share ideas on line. 

iPhone means iTypo - please forgive

On Jun 15, 2011, at 13:14, Casey Ransberger  wrote:

> +1
> 
> For an example of how wonderful and also not-Wikipedia this can be, check out:
> 
> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PortlandPatternRepository
> 
> If you haven't seen this yet, it's the best wiki ever, a sprawling 
> hyperlinked conversation that covers just about every concept in programming, 
> with lots of opinion and historical tidbits (i.e., it's not an encyclopedia 
> at all and isn't trying to be) and a focus on people, places, and patterns. 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Carl Gundel  wrote:
> Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?
> 
>  
> 
> -Carl
> 
>  
> 
> From: fonc-boun...@vpri.org [mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org] On Behalf Of CHM 
> de Beer
> Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:21 AM
> To: fonc@vpri.org
> Subject: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration
> 
>  
> 
> Hello fonc members,
> 
> Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads on 
> this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater understanding and 
> insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and somewhat seasonal 
> traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising the impact of our efforts.
> 
> Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and 
> initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to 
> explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously that means I may 
> have to relinquish a pet project, but I am surprisingly comfortable with it, 
> if substantial progress on fundamentals of new computing results.
> 
> Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 196x, we 
> considered this, but elected to go with that, because of some reason," or "we 
> did this, going forward you should consider something else."  In my 
> imagination I can see as many opinions as there were people in the room.  Yet 
> the language suggest the initiatives were reduced to a handful, and then 
> pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by following the same 
> pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a virtual, distributed 
> team.
> 
> Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked against us. 
>  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly 
> understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle 
> exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is that a number of talented 
> individuals pool their energy and collaborate towards fundamentally changing 
> computing.
> 
> I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at 
> least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Marius
> 
> -- 
> mobile: +1 604 369 1854
> skype: chmdebeer
> twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Ian Piumarta]

Dethe,

> When I go to Log in/ create account I don't see any way to actually create an 
> account.

Sorry about that.  I have enabled account creation.  (IIRC it was disabled 
following the vpri wiki being hacked.)

Regards,
Ian


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Re: Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[BGB]

On 6/15/2011 6:30 AM, Dethe Elza wrote:

On 2011-06-15, at 3:22 AM, BGB wrote:


and, meanwhile, recent output has been net negative...

Nothing wrong with that, we learn to write better, tighter code and get rid of 
the old cruft. Some of the best code I've seen has been written with the delete 
key...



a lot of it in my case seems to be factoring things out.

say, one replaces a big glob of code with a function call (the function 
then does the same task). then the big glob of code becomes an "#if 0 
... #endif" block (this has happened a lot in my script VM recently, 
there are a large number of these blocks).


then generally, sometime later, this "#if 0" block ends up being removed 
(once the code is confirmed no-longer-useful).
it seems that recently this factor has been outweighing the addition of 
new code.


in some other cases, some partially redundant systems (doing nearly the 
same thing in slightly different ways, or via a different interface) 
have been effectively merged, ...



the partial result (after removing 150 kloc of GPL code, dropping 
project size to around 1.05Mloc or so) was then my project going from 
around 1.05Mloc down to about 750 kloc (in approx 6 months).


so, a shrinkage of around 300 kloc in 6 months or so...

granted, there is some room for error here (I have better things to do 
than accurately catalog then when and where of the removal of code, or 
to keep a running log of the total project kloc at various moments in 
time). I just occasionally re-run line counters, and see what I see.




a mystery though is how generally "off putting" the school experience can be to 
people...
I generally remember these years of my life to be just plain dismal (I really 
don't know how people can find much enjoyment in all this...).

Don't get me started on how bad school can be for turning kids off from 
learning. No mystery to it, helping kids learn just really isn't part of what 
schools were designed for, despite using that as a story to sell them to the 
public.


fair enough...

for those of us without much of a social life, and not personally all 
that motivated by grades, ..., there is really not a lot to find 
enjoyable in all this.




One more point that is more on topic: Using the Scratch block-based visual 
programming, I saw that an eight year old was able to download, read, 
understand, and modify successfully (i.e., make the changes he 
desired/anticipated) pretty much any code he found on the Scratch site. Not too 
many languages I can say that for, even with adults. Not all of that can be 
attributed to the visual nature -- Scratch is also very tightly constrained and 
the limits can aid understanding too, as well as picking the right abstractions 
to represent with blocks, but it was impressive and I think the fact that the 
blocks show visually the structure and behaviour (sets of blocks tied to a 
specific sprite, blocks highlight as they are run) of the program does help 
considerably in being able to read, understand, and maintain someone else's 
code.

In fact, I'm interested enough in the block structure visualization that I've 
been porting just the blocks, without the Scratch semantics and runtime, to the 
web. You can use scratch-like blocks to write and output any language, provided 
a language plugin. As a demonstration, I'm writing a language plugin for 
Javascript (plus Raphael, for graphics) and Martyn Eggleton is working on a 
plugin for writing Arduino code. It is still early days, very alpha, but if 
anyone is interested there is more here:

https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/wiki [info]
https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/ [code]
https://waterbearlang.com/ [Javascript demo]
http://stretch.deedah.org/waterbear/ [Arduino demo]

I've been meaning to share this with the group here, but wanting to get it 
roughed in a bit more, but here it is in all its half-baked glory. Feedback 
highly appreciated.



fair enough, I will leave the above here, but don't have much time to 
look at or comment on it at the moment.



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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Max OrHai]

Thank Ward Cunningham, nearly fifteen years ago, long before the appearance
of Jimmy Wales and his ilk. Of course, the idea of a "Pattern Language" is
due to Christopher Alexander, in the seventies. And as for where he got
it...

http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/patternsframe.htm?/leveltwo/../history/ajustsostory6.htm

-- max

(BTW, the Pattern Language books are much better looking than the website...
but also not cheap.)

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Casey Ransberger  wrote:

> +1
>
> For an example of how wonderful and also not-Wikipedia this can be, check
> out:
>
> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PortlandPatternRepository
>
> If you haven't seen this yet, it's the best wiki ever, a sprawling
> hyperlinked conversation that covers just about every concept in
> programming, with lots of opinion and historical tidbits (i.e., it's not an
> encyclopedia at all and isn't trying to be) and a focus on people, places,
> and patterns.
>
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Carl Gundel wrote:
>
>> Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?*
>> ***
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> -Carl
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *From:* fonc-boun...@vpri.org [mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org] *On Behalf
>> Of *CHM de Beer
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:21 AM
>> *To:* fonc@vpri.org
>> *Subject:* [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Hello fonc members,
>>
>> Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads on
>> this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater understanding and
>> insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and somewhat seasonal
>> traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising the impact of our efforts.
>>
>> Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and
>> initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to
>> explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously that means I may
>> have to relinquish a pet project, but I am surprisingly comfortable with it,
>> if substantial progress on fundamentals of new computing results.
>>
>> Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 196x,
>> we considered *this*, but elected to go with *that*, because of *some
>> reason*," or "we did *this*, going forward you should consider *something
>> else*."  In my imagination I can see as many opinions as there were
>> people in the room.  Yet the language suggest the initiatives were reduced
>> to a handful, and then pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by
>> following the same pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a
>> virtual, distributed team.
>>
>> Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked against
>> us.  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly
>> understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle
>> exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is that a number of talented
>> individuals pool their energy and collaborate towards fundamentally changing
>> computing.
>>
>> I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at
>> least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Marius
>>
>> --
>> mobile: +1 604 369 1854
>> skype: chmdebeer
>> twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer
>>
>> ___
>> fonc mailing list
>> fonc@vpri.org
>> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Casey Ransberger
>
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>
>
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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Casey Ransberger]

+1

For an example of how wonderful and also not-Wikipedia this can be, check
out:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PortlandPatternRepository

If you haven't seen this yet, it's the best wiki ever, a sprawling
hyperlinked conversation that covers just about every concept in
programming, with lots of opinion and historical tidbits (i.e., it's not an
encyclopedia at all and isn't trying to be) and a focus on people, places,
and patterns.

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Carl Gundel wrote:

> Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?**
> **
>
> ** **
>
> -Carl
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* fonc-boun...@vpri.org [mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org] *On Behalf Of
> *CHM de Beer
> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:21 AM
> *To:* fonc@vpri.org
> *Subject:* [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration
>
> ** **
>
> Hello fonc members,
>
> Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads on
> this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater understanding and
> insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and somewhat seasonal
> traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising the impact of our efforts.
>
> Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and
> initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to
> explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously that means I may
> have to relinquish a pet project, but I am surprisingly comfortable with it,
> if substantial progress on fundamentals of new computing results.
>
> Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 196x,
> we considered *this*, but elected to go with *that*, because of *some
> reason*," or "we did *this*, going forward you should consider *something
> else*."  In my imagination I can see as many opinions as there were people
> in the room.  Yet the language suggest the initiatives were reduced to a
> handful, and then pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by
> following the same pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a
> virtual, distributed team.
>
> Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked against
> us.  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly
> understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle
> exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is that a number of talented
> individuals pool their energy and collaborate towards fundamentally changing
> computing.
>
> I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at
> least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.
>
> Regards,
>
> Marius
>
> --
> mobile: +1 604 369 1854
> skype: chmdebeer
> twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer
>
> ___
> fonc mailing list
> fonc@vpri.org
> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
>
>


-- 
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Re: [fonc] Re: Improving efficiency of Worlds, in Software and Hardware

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

At Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:53:02 -0400,
C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> 
> I understand where I went wrong now, but on reflection it still seems
> odd that the parent context isn't explicitly mentioned in the API.
> Instead writing
>world.parent.commit(world);
> would make clear what two worlds are affected... but that's
> unnecessarily verbose.  So not necessarily an improvement to anything
> other than my originally-confused brain.

  Yes we are finding that occasionally, you would want to
"test-commit" to an experimental world.  Say, you started some
exploration in a world and getting satisfy with it.  But before really
commiting this world to the top-level world and make it permanent, you
would like to see if this does not break some application specific
invariants.  To do so, you would want to make a new world that is
almost like the top level world (thus a new child of the top level)
and merge changes into it then perform some integrity checks safely in
the world, Fix up a few things if necessary and then commit to the
top-level world.  A strict tree organization of worlds would not let
us do this.

> OK, my email is too long now, too!

  Then write it in Chinese next time!

-- Yoshiki

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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Dethe Elza]

On 2011-06-15, at 8:55 AM, Ian Piumarta wrote:

> If a wiki is the kind of "database" you had in mind, please feel free to make 
> use of:
> 
> http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki

Thanks for setting this up, Ian. When I go to Log in/ create account I don't 
see any way to actually create an account. I tried both Chrome, Firefox and 
Safari on OS X.

--Dethe
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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Ian Piumarta]

>> Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and 
>> initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to 
>> explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.

I believe so, for all definitions of "platform".

>> "Back in 196x, we considered this, but elected to go with that, because of 
>> some reason," or "we did this, going forward you should consider something 
>> else."  In my imagination I can see as many opinions as there were people in 
>> the room.  Yet the language suggest the initiatives were reduced to a 
>> handful, and then pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by 
>> following the same pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a 
>> virtual, distributed team.

If it can be kept objective (in the judgemental sense) and open-ended, at least 
five valuable artefacts could be produced from this kind of research: a 
historical perspective on the important dialogues that occurred, analysis of 
what was chosen/rejected as interesting and why, hindsight on which turned out 
to be interesting (or not) and why, a synthesis of what should be current 
understanding, and a proposal for a platform (or family of related platforms, 
in the architectural sense) based on that understanding on which to work and 
then stand while starting the next round of dialogues.

With the caveat that lots of important ideas can be found in vastly unrelated 
territory, and that focussing our attentions on what we might prefer to be the 
good ideas is itself a very bad idea, here is one potential source of 
information for the historians:

http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/Maxwell-DynabookFinal.pdf

>> Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly 
>> understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle 
>> exists to to nurture it.

+360

> I can imagine a c2.com like wiki that is specifically focused on fundamentals 
> of new computing, with a similar mixture of documentation and discussion.
> 
>> Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?
>> 
>> 
>>> I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at 
>>> least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.


If a wiki is the kind of "database" you had in mind, please feel free to make 
use of:

http://vpri.org/fonc_wiki

If a straw-man position statement would be useful to start the process 
reactively, I would have time to make one tomorrow.

Regards,
Ian


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Re: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Erik Terpstra]

 That was also what I was thinking.

In fact the suggestion of Marius reminds me of the combination of ad-hoc 
documentation and discussion that is happening on the c2.com wiki, see 
for example this article about documenting Alan Kay's definition of OO:


http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented

I can imagine a c2.com like wiki that is specifically focused on 
fundamentals of new computing, with a similar mixture of documentation 
and discussion.


Regards,

Erik.

On 06/15/2011 04:30 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:


Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?

-Carl

*From:* fonc-boun...@vpri.org [mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org] *On 
Behalf Of *CHM de Beer

*Sent:* Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:21 AM
*To:* fonc@vpri.org
*Subject:* [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

Hello fonc members,

Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads 
on this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater 
understanding and insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and 
somewhat seasonal traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising 
the impact of our efforts.


Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas 
and initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful 
concepts to explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously 
that means I may have to relinquish a pet project, but I am 
surprisingly comfortable with it, if substantial progress on 
fundamentals of new computing results.


Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 
196x, we considered /this/, but elected to go with /that/, because of 
/some reason/," or "we did /this/, going forward you should consider 
/something else/."  In my imagination I can see as many opinions as 
there were people in the room.  Yet the language suggest the 
initiatives were reduced to a handful, and then pursued with vigour.  
Just think of what we can do by following the same pattern, and we 
have the added benefit of doing it as a virtual, distributed team.


Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked 
against us.  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even 
when incorrectly understood) receives lip service in the press, but no 
current-day vehicle exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is 
that a number of talented individuals pool their energy and 
collaborate towards fundamentally changing computing.


I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are 
at least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.


Regards,

Marius

--
mobile: +1 604 369 1854
skype: chmdebeer
twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer 


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RE: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[Carl Gundel]

Why not use a wiki to collaborate and organize thoughts and information?

 

-Carl

 

From: fonc-boun...@vpri.org [mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org] On Behalf Of CHM
de Beer
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 10:21 AM
To: fonc@vpri.org
Subject: [fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

 

Hello fonc members,

Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads on
this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater understanding and
insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and somewhat seasonal
traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising the impact of our efforts.

Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and
initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to
explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously that means I may
have to relinquish a pet project, but I am surprisingly comfortable with it,
if substantial progress on fundamentals of new computing results.

Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 196x, we
considered this, but elected to go with that, because of some reason," or
"we did this, going forward you should consider something else."  In my
imagination I can see as many opinions as there were people in the room.
Yet the language suggest the initiatives were reduced to a handful, and then
pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by following the same
pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a virtual, distributed
team.

Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked against
us.  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly
understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle
exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is that a number of talented
individuals pool their energy and collaborate towards fundamentally changing
computing.

I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at
least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.

Regards,

Marius

-- 
mobile: +1 604 369 1854
skype: chmdebeer
twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer

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[fonc] Consolidation and collaboration

[CHM de Beer]

Hello fonc members,

Over the past year I have greatly enjoyed, and benefited from, threads on
this mailing list, written by individuals with far greater understanding and
insight than I will ever master.  The diversity, and somewhat seasonal
traffic, does make me wonder if we are maximising the impact of our efforts.

Would there be value in a platform for us to; capture all the ideas and
initiatives, distil them into groups, reduce them to a handful concepts to
explore, and finally focus all our efforts on.  Obviously that means I may
have to relinquish a pet project, but I am surprisingly comfortable with it,
if substantial progress on fundamentals of new computing results.

Consider the typical mail from Dr. Kay.  He would comment: "Back in 196x, we
considered *this*, but elected to go with *that*, because of *some reason*,"
or "we did *this*, going forward you should consider *something else*."  In
my imagination I can see as many opinions as there were people in the room.
Yet the language suggest the initiatives were reduced to a handful, and then
pursued with vigour.  Just think of what we can do by following the same
pattern, and we have the added benefit of doing it as a virtual, distributed
team.

Significant action is needed, because I fear the odds are stacked against
us.  Invention receives no attention, and innovation (even when incorrectly
understood) receives lip service in the press, but no current-day vehicle
exists to to nurture it.  The only hope I have, is that a number of talented
individuals pool their energy and collaborate towards fundamentally changing
computing.

I am willing to start a database of ideas and initiatives if there are at
least a few in the fonc group that agree in principle.

Regards,

Marius

-- 
mobile: +1 604 369 1854
skype: chmdebeer
twitter: twitter.com/chmdebeer
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Waterbear announcement (was Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?))

[Dethe Elza]

On 2011-06-15, at 3:22 AM, BGB wrote:

> and, meanwhile, recent output has been net negative...

Nothing wrong with that, we learn to write better, tighter code and get rid of 
the old cruft. Some of the best code I've seen has been written with the delete 
key...

> a mystery though is how generally "off putting" the school experience can be 
> to people...
> I generally remember these years of my life to be just plain dismal (I really 
> don't know how people can find much enjoyment in all this...).

Don't get me started on how bad school can be for turning kids off from 
learning. No mystery to it, helping kids learn just really isn't part of what 
schools were designed for, despite using that as a story to sell them to the 
public.

One more point that is more on topic: Using the Scratch block-based visual 
programming, I saw that an eight year old was able to download, read, 
understand, and modify successfully (i.e., make the changes he 
desired/anticipated) pretty much any code he found on the Scratch site. Not too 
many languages I can say that for, even with adults. Not all of that can be 
attributed to the visual nature -- Scratch is also very tightly constrained and 
the limits can aid understanding too, as well as picking the right abstractions 
to represent with blocks, but it was impressive and I think the fact that the 
blocks show visually the structure and behaviour (sets of blocks tied to a 
specific sprite, blocks highlight as they are run) of the program does help 
considerably in being able to read, understand, and maintain someone else's 
code.

In fact, I'm interested enough in the block structure visualization that I've 
been porting just the blocks, without the Scratch semantics and runtime, to the 
web. You can use scratch-like blocks to write and output any language, provided 
a language plugin. As a demonstration, I'm writing a language plugin for 
Javascript (plus Raphael, for graphics) and Martyn Eggleton is working on a 
plugin for writing Arduino code. It is still early days, very alpha, but if 
anyone is interested there is more here:

https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/wiki [info]
https://github.com/dethe/waterbear/ [code]
https://waterbearlang.com/ [Javascript demo]
http://stretch.deedah.org/waterbear/ [Arduino demo]

I've been meaning to share this with the group here, but wanting to get it 
roughed in a bit more, but here it is in all its half-baked glory. Feedback 
highly appreciated.

--Dethe



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Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?)

[Tristan Slominski]

>
> but, yeah... being young, time seems to go by very slowly, and just sitting
> around fiddling with something, one accomplishes a lot of stuff in a
> relatively short period of time.
>
> as one gets older though, time goes by ever faster, and one can observe
> that less and less happens in a given period of time. then one sees many
> older people, and what one sees doesn't look all that promising.
>
> sadly, as is seemingly the case that a lot of potentially ones' potentially
> most productive years are squandered away doing things like schoolwork and
> similar, and by the time one generally gets done with all this, ones' mind
> has already become somewhat dulled due to age.
>

>From the insights into how the human neocortex "learns" information gained
from the research (not mine) in Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) machine
learning model, I would contest the idea that "less happens in a give period
of time as you get older."

If you explore HTM, it illustrates that as inputs are generated, they are
evaluated in the context of the predictions that the network is making at
any given time.

As a young person, the neocortex knows nothing, so all the predictions are
most often wrong. When there is dissonance between prediction and input, a
sort of *interrupt* happens ( which gives us awareness of time ) and
learning of a new pattern eventually occurs.  As we get older, less and less
of the world becomes *novel*, so our neocortical predictions are more and
more correct, generating less and less interrupts. One could argue that our
perception of time is the number of these interrupts occurring in an
interval of proper time. The concept of *flow* for example, when one loses
track of time being fully immersed in a problem, could be simply the fact
that you are so engaged and knowledgable in an area that your mind is able
to successfully isolate itself from interrupt generating input and process
information at peak efficiency.

I would go even as far as saying that the "productivity" described in
"productive years" is more of an "exposure to novel input" than actual
productivity.
Perhaps another way of stating what you're perceiving could be that you have
more and more *friction* of learned patterns to overcome as you try to adapt
to novel input as you get older.
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Re: Age and Language (was Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?)

[BGB]

On 6/14/2011 9:50 PM, Dethe Elza wrote:

On 2011-06-14, at 9:36 PM, Julian Leviston wrote:


The thing that irritates me about this attitude of "don't consider kids as equal" is that 
we DO consider them as equal in other frames... we expect so much of them in terms of linguistic 
and cognitive development... and actually the abstractions (zero-th order abstraction) capable of 
and exhibited by a 5 year old are used when in the activity called "programming" all the 
time... so much so we as adult programmers rarely think about them.

Not equal. Children are very different cognitively from adults and it is 
important to resist the temptation to treat them as little adults. On the other 
hand, we shouldn't condescend to them, they are like learning sponges and can 
absorb ideas far beyond what we generally give them credit for.


not much experience interacting with kids (don't have kids, never 
married, don't have a significant other either, as things just never 
seem to go anywhere...).



but, yeah... being young, time seems to go by very slowly, and just 
sitting around fiddling with something, one accomplishes a lot of stuff 
in a relatively short period of time.


as one gets older though, time goes by ever faster, and one can observe 
that less and less happens in a given period of time. then one sees many 
older people, and what one sees doesn't look all that promising.


sadly, as is seemingly the case that a lot of potentially ones' 
potentially most productive years are squandered away doing things like 
schoolwork and similar, and by the time one generally gets done with all 
this, ones' mind has already become somewhat dulled due to age.



it is like, me noting that several years ago, I was dealing with a 
personal-project codebase expansion of around +120 kloc/yr or so (and a 
few cases of breaking 1 kloc/day, usually in bursts), but more recently, 
my codebase has actually been shrinking (seemingly defying common 
sense...). granted, it is a question of how big of a codebase can be 
reasonably developed and maintained by a single developer though.


also, maybe the underlying forces behind codebase expansion and 
shrinking, where positive effort and adding functionality doesn't 
necessarily always make ones' code get bigger, ... it leaves something 
to ponder.


granted, at the time I was pulling off high output rates:
I wrote an x86 assembler/linker, pulling off around 10 kloc in 3 days or 
something;
when writing a C compiler, which turned out very large, and a bug-ridden 
mess;
writing an x86 interpreter, which itself was like 40 kloc in around a 2 
weeks or similar;

...

granted, these sorts of efforts are relatively rare.
scary would be if someone else could (actually) pull off consistent 
output at this rate (and emit code consistently at approx 1Mloc/yr...).


and, meanwhile, recent output has been net negative...

hmm...




One problem is immersion. They learn language amazingly fast (in large part) because they 
are immersed in it constantly. Seymour Papert's book, Mindstorms is one of the best reads 
I've ever had about software, and he discusses creating "worlds" for math, 
physics, and other subjects on the computer so that children can be as immersed in those 
worlds as they are naturally in the world of language. That was one of the guiding ideas 
behind the creation of Logo.


yes, but it is also notable that they learn language, being exposed to 
it in its full complexity.


it is like, kids don't learn from a watered-down subset of the language, 
they just learn the language from hearing others use it.


hence, a large portion of immersion may be more due to availability and 
them having a personal interest or reason.




Some of the structural patterns that a small child already has at least some 
mastership of are connection, fitting, representation, indirection, context, 
mood, physical relationship. These are all used in simple programming. Perhaps 
they don't have the meta-words, but that's okay - that can come later at about 
12 when they begin their next level of abstract cognitive development (ie 
proper abstract thought).

My flatmate's 7 year old daughter is in the process of mastering addition, 
subtraction, multiplication and division. These things are quite abstract. My 
flatmate's THREE year old (!!) understands in a non-verbal way the idea of a 
pointer and mouse connection. Do you realise how advanced that idea is? 
Consider that he's only really begun to talk in sentences properly in the last 
6 to 8 weeks. It's very simple in terms of our usage of computers, but it's an 
incredibly complex structural pattern, really... it's representation and 
indirection... you move this thing, and it represents this other thing, and we 
can use it to manipulate yet more things... of course the child doesn't realise 
that the things on the screen aren't real that they're simply further 
representations... but you get the gist... the capacity is there... and the 
ENERGY t