Comments below. On Jun 13, 2011, at 6:00 AM, Dale Schumacher <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 4:50 AM, BGB <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> however, unlike full image-based development, the app will generally >> "forget" everything that was going on once it is exited and restarted. >> > > I think this is one of the most annoying "features" of our current > computer systems. If I have a project (or 10 or 20 projects) spread > out on my workbench, and I leave to have something to eat, or go to > sleep, when I return everything is still (more or less) in the state I > left it. Dale, when read this it wasn't clear to me what you meant to convey. Are you saying "it's annoying that when I come back to my bench, I have to swim all the way back to the context I was in before" or are you saying "when I return to my bench, it's annoying to have to close all of that stuff because what I usually want is a new context anyway"? It seems that persistence of user experience is being naturally selected at the end of the day. Apple did it for iOS, and justified it by way of "users have to get the phone back into the pocket in a hurry sometimes." It seems to have worked well enough for them that they've added this to the Mac in Lion. Redmond has undoubtably noticed. I've seen both arguments. At times I've wondered if it wasn't a matter of "learning style." I know that I'm definitely in the former camp. > Long-running stability and continuous upgrading (WITHOUT "rebooting") > should be the norm. There should be no such thing as a "boot" > process. A system should remain stable (and running) throughout a > lifetime of gradual evolution/mutation. Of course, we also need a way > to branch/fork/clone/version and even start-from-embryo, to build new > systems. The next step is to consider how the "system" (or parts of > it) can migrate, or become mobile, among hosts. + 1 Another thing I'd like to see that I can do with images, but can't do with "dead code," is (easily) set up a server instance such that when it hits an unhanded exception, it saves off an image before it dies, with all of the state and context intact, and a source level debugger open. I want this because a great deal of my blackbox tester's time goes into identifying steps to reproduce. With the image, one needs to worry about repro steps a lot less, which frees these people up to spend their time on things like exploring systems with deeper probes and crossing the bridge into whitebox land, which is where I want them all to end up: reading the code and automating painful tasks as they test.
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