Remember the "One Laptop Per Child" project, that developed a low-cost computer for children in developing countries? I was always amazed by a certain feature: The "View Source" button.
When you pressed it, the source code for the currently running application would open. This was supposed to encourage tinkering with the software on your device! <3
I've been pondering what it would take to build that button on modern machines. Has anyone seen something like that?
(Prototype in next toot.)
You'd roughly need to:
- Figure out which program is currently focused
- Figure out the Git repo of this software
- Clone it into a temporary directory
- Set up the required tools to start hacking on it and compile it
As a quick prototype, I wrote a li'l Bash script that does some of these things. It makes heavy use of #nix and #nixpkgs:
https://codeberg.org/blinry/view-source-button
I enters a "dev shell" with the required tools already in the PATH, and even sets up a Git remote to start contributing. :D
Or have the entire system built around being interpreted like Python or C#. Maybe C# would even be a better option as it's JIT compiler is better in my eyes. And it integrates better with that XML based GUI definition language Microsoft had.
Edit: WPF XAML was it.
@ShadSterling @agowa338 @blinry that's one of the very long term goals of my post-scarcity computing project, but it's not one I expect to hit in my lifetime.
"To summarise, again:
Code is data. The internal representation of data is Don't Know, Don't Care. The output format of data is not constrained by the input format; it should suit the use to which it is to be put, the person to whom it is to be displayed...."
/Continued
@ShadSterling @agowa338 @blinry
"Thus if the person to whom my Java code is reflected back is a LISP programmer, it should be reflected back in idiomatic LISP syntax; if a Python programmer, in idiomatic Python syntax. Let us not, for goodness sake, get hung up about syntax; syntax is frosting on the top. What's important is that the programmer editing the code should edit something which is clearly understandable to him or her." -- me, obviously.
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2006-02-20-postscarcity-software/
For years we've said that our computers were Turing equivalent, equivalent to Turing's machine U. That they could compute any function which could be computed. They aren't, of course, and they can't, for one very important reason. U had infinite store, and our machines don't. We have always been store-poor. We've been mill-poor, too: our processors have been slow, running at hundreds, then a few thousands, of cycles per second. We haven't been able to afford the cycles to do any sophisticated munging of our data. What we stored — in the most store intensive format we had — was what we got, and what we delivered to our users. It was a compromise, but a compromise forced on us by the inadequacy of our machines.The thing is, we've been programming for sixty years now. When I was learning my trade, I worked with a few people who'd worked on Baby — the Manchester Mark One — and even with two people who remembered Turing personally. They were old then, approaching retirement; great software people with great skills to pass on, the last of the first generation programmers. I'm a second generation programmer, and I'm fifty. Most people in software would reckon me too old now to cut code. The people cutting code in the front line now know the name Turing, of course, because they learned about U in their first year classes; but Turing as a person — as someone with a personality, quirks, foibles — is no more real to them than Christopher Columbus or Noah, and, indeed, much less real than Aragorn of the Dunedain.
blinry
Klaus Frank
ShadSterling
Simon Brooke