Too Much Power?
Here is someone wondering about concepts in a programming system he’s creating. Sure, the concepts (like bootstrapping the compiler in itself, code and data being mostly the same thing, etcetera) are powerful, but this is stuff that’s been around since the ’70’s (Google for Lisp or Smalltalk, for starters) and he’s marveling at it like a child seeing a christmas tree for the first time.
I don’t know this guy (or gal, even that I don’t know), and I hope he enjoys reinventing wheels, but is access to computer science papers really that restricted? I mean, this is stuff anyone who thinks himself capable of starting on a programming system should know or at least should be able to find, no?



December 6th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Well, for a start, this person thinks s/he is able to go without a HAL. Part of the things I dig about Squeak is that it is agnostic about the system, in a much larger way than Java is; I even have my own gui! I might be wrong, but to me, the VM is the HAL.
Or maybe s/he is not so concerned with what is to be made, but more in love with the machinery..