On Sunday, 19 October 2014 at 04:55:55 UTC, ketmar via
Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:38:35 +0000
Joakim via Digitalmars-d-learn
<digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com>
wrote:
don't you think that we are going in circles now? not that i'm
tired of
this conversation, but i see that we get each other's POVs, and
have no
more arguments to convince each other. ;-)
I guess, when does anyone ever convince anyone else online?
People usually just throw their arguments at each other and leave
holding the same opinion. ;)
>> I don't read books anymore
> even technical ones? ;-)
I think the only technical book I've read in the last decade
is Andrei's TDPL, which I bought in print and got about
halfway through. I've probably read bits and pieces of maybe
five other non-technical books here and there in the same
timespan, which were all given to me as gifts. I've never
read an ebook, yet I read extensively online. Books are an
outdated form, now that we have blogs.
i believe that blog posts and textbooks compliments each other.
i
prefer textbook for learning new language, for example, and
read blogs
to learn some interesting/funny/hidden features.
That may be true now, but soon it will be just blogs.
I don't know much about Oberon, but that gadgets UI sounds
like it's still a GUI.
sure, it's GUI, but with some "consolish" pieces dropped in.
you can
connect components and you can write some textual
commands/scripts to
modify component behavior. best from both worlds! ;-)
The desktop UI paradigm needs to be completely redone, from the
ground up. Current desktop GUIs are too limiting and the
terminal is powerful but antiquated. The problem is how best to
combine the two, since one is focused on keyboard input whether
the other mostly uses trackpad/mouse. I suspect voice will have
to be the new input to this new desktop GUI.
I actually agree with you that some sort of component system
like that is likely the future, even if it's only ultimately
used to make developers' lives easier and largely unconfigured
by users themselves
it's simple enough for users to modify. changing layouts by
dragging
components, embedding components into components and so on.
this things
are mostly "visual" and easy.
people love to customize their working environment if it's easy
enough. ;-)
I agree that customization should be made really easy, but what
percentage of users ever configure their settings themselves now?
I bet it's a negligible percentage. What I think is more likely
is that they will pay someone to configure the component desktop
you envision to suit them, but that person won't necessarily be a
developer, more likely a power user.
though I haven't looked much into the complex historical
reasons why it hasn't happened yet.
'cause so-called "software industry" is not ready to die yet.
;-) with
proper component system there will be no much sense in selling
"applications". and selling components is much harder: how many
people
will buy "e-mail data source component"? it's not even visual!
and selling "e-mail reader" is worthless, 'cause people will
deconstruct it to basic parts and build their own
"application", and
will not buy "shiny new version with improved interface". they
will not
even buy the "full package" if they only need one part of it,
like
"faster e-mail data source component".
so the only way to keep "software bussines" (as we know it)
running is
turning component system back to non-component one. take, for
example,
COM technology (which is badly done, but still usable component
system). how much software uses COM to decouple application in
reusable
parts? even microsoft realised that this will be disaster and
turned
COM to "advancing scripting interface" instead of truly
component
system.
I agree that the software business likely just didn't do it
right, but I doubt that's all of it. Any component system isn't
going to be as fast and efficient as a bespoke system. Maybe the
hardware just wasn't fast enough for that lack of efficiency, but
with how powerful hardware has gotten these days, maybe we're
finally ready for it.
> have you ever seen BlackBox Component Builder? it's written
> in
> Component Pascal, but the basic principles are
> language-independent.
> i'm dreaming about BCB with D as base language...
No, never heard of it, sounds interesting.
try it, it's fun and free! ;-) you'll see "component programming
system" in action. it's not "component OS", but it's great
programming
environment nevertheless. D is almost capable of powering such
system.
if only i had more free time and motivation... creating
something
BCB-like can be that "killer app" D needs.
I've loaded up a chapter from this pdf book about it:
http://www.cslab.pepperdine.edu/warford/ComputingFundamentals/
I'll take a look.
