@guillaume wrote:
There are many interesting things about this project. I wish there were a publication of some sort that outlined the boundaries of the work done, what it is based on, the problems they’ve found it solves well, where they intend on taking it… there does not seem to be such a thing yet. Fingers crossed. (insert side rant here about how traditional academic publications are terribly unsuited for a lot of HCI work, but how it is very nice to have something to refer to that sums up the work years later, when the source code does not compile anymore and the authors have moved on to other things).
In the meantime, from what I’ve seen posted around, it seems to build on top of one of Alan Kay’s previous endeavours, STEPS (http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf). STEPS was a project around using modern programming languages, patterns, tools, etc. to have an entire OS, fully usable by the “average computer user”, in less than 20k lines of code. I remember reading a passage around the code for rendering vector graphics - something that would take tens of thousands of lines in C++ - fitting in a couple hundred lines or so.
(here’s a blog post about it if the report is too much: https://blog.regehr.org/archives/663)
So yeah, this tweet that mentions the source code that makes Dynamic Land being on the wall (and presumably directly editable etc.) made me think of STEPS.
I really hope to see some documentation/publication of some sort coming out of that group. I get irritated when a bunch of people broadly hype something on social media that no one else has no access to; it just feels llike cheap social signaling, in a “look how cool we are, but you don’t get to know anything about it besides how cool and revolutionary it is” kind of way. I know that that’s on me, and likely not the intention, but still.