On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, _why wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 12:53:09PM -0700, Phlip wrote:
> > But even in these days of 256 Gig storage on quad-core workstations, I
> > still miss the heady clarity of ultra-lean GUI programs like UEdit, and its
> > awesome scripting language...
>
> I am a bit disappointed that Shoes' dependencies are quite large.
> And, really, Ruby is the largest of these. While I contemplated
Seems to be the way things go. Ruby used to be small enough to fit
on one floppy disk, as lua still was last time I looked.
Knoppix, if memory serves, used to fit on a floppy, and it seems
the last version that would fit on a CD was January 2007, and now it
comes on a DVD. But the history of computing always reads like "The
Four Yorkshiremen" sketch...
> using Lua or JavaScript, both seemed to clutter the syntax I had in
> mind.
>
> REBOL seems as close to perfect as I can imagine. It also uses Cairo,
I never really liked the licencing for REBOL, but it's a while since
I looked at it. I think it was about copying it, and about agreeing
that all users will comply with some aspects, completely
unenforceable by me if I install it on a system here.
FORTH doesn't have a reverse polish syntax. Well, yes, the core
language does, but you can define words to take input in various
ways, and it is small. Openboot PROMs are FORTH based, and you
usually type
boot sd0
rather than
sd0 boot
as a case in point. I never really got to grips with it, but admire
the design. [And, apart from comments, it leaves all those
parentheses free for the Lisp people to grab for themselves :-)]
I'm not sure what else might be worth exploring.
> but doesn't have the amount of bundled libraries that Ruby has, so
> is much leaner. Perhaps once Rubinius and YARV come into play,
Definitely a tension between those two desires.
> we'll see much leaner Ruby and a thinner Shoes as well.
>
> _why
>
Hugh
