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
So if you've been wondering why I'm into obscure bugs this week like:
- Figuring out why I'm missing icons in pavucontrol https://chaos.social/@blinry/116081436255395069
- Improving the man page of a Nix CLI helper https://github.com/nix-community/nh/pull/568
- Reporting broken shortcuts in the Firefox DevTools https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2017113
… it was testcases for tying out this "View Source Button". :P
Attached: 1 image Hmm, is anyone else missing this icon in pavucontrol? (On more "bare-bones" window managers, maybe?) I'm trying to figure which piece I'd need to fix here. I'm on #NixOS, but that doesn't seem to be the only reason. :D This seems to be the "emblem-default" icon https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/-/blob/master/src/devicewidget.ui?ref_type=heads#L80 which Nix' adwaita-icon-theme doesn't seem to have anymore… The nixpkgs derivation is here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/by-name/pa/pavucontrol/package.nix #gnome #gtk
It's been fun, it feels like a new superpower to "quickly fix something and send a PR". It's also a super dangerous rabbit hole generator, because now that it's easy to fix stuff, it's very tempting to do so… 🐇
My prototype has some rough edges:
It clones the latest commit, which doesn't always compile using the #nixpkgs setup (but it seems reasonable to check whether the bug is still there).
And invoking the phases of the nixpkgs stdenv manually can be tricky. https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-building-stdenv-package-in-nix-shell
For myself, ideally, the script would set up a #Nix flake with all dependencies in it, and activate it using direnv. Which would probably mean transforming the nixpkgs package into a flake?
The script could also give you some aliases to run the nixpkgs phases like configure, patch, or build, from your current shell – I like using the fish shell, but the stdenv assumes bash. I haven't found a reasonable way to invoke the phases "in a subshell"… Getting errors like this: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/15282
@korenchkin @dwardoric @blinry I mean, this is already pretty easy today if you use Emacs for everything =) C-h k gives you hyperlinks straight to the source of any command bound to a keystroke
the main problem is that sometimes your boss makes you use programs that aren't emacs =(
@blinry This is such an awesome idea! When I read your first toot I thought immediately "that'd be near impossible for non-interpetted language programmes" but I love this because you've converted it into essentially a search problem!
Such a clever way to take stuff from "almost impossible" to "super achievable" almost instantly!
This seems like just the thing to shave papercuts and rough edges off linux mobile efforts.
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.
@agowa338 @blinry Wasn't C# simply a MS repackage of MS J++, the MS version of Java, because they were sued by Sun?
Years ago I used to peer inside Java "jars" on XP and Ubuntu.
I found C# far better than VB.net, but both inferior to VB6 for quick GUIs on SQL or simulating keypad and LCD of a microcontroller and prototyping the code.
Then I went back to RF design and mostly abandoned programming apart from JAL on PIC18.
But view source is very niche. You only want the overhead on a Dev's PC.
don't know. Was before my times.
And btw, there is basically 0 overhead from "view source" in C#, as the JIT will at runtime optimise the code and cache the compiled code until it is invalidated by you changing the source or something. In fact if you're writing powershell and the interpreter hits a loop the first few passes will be interpreted while it is in the background compiling it. And once it is done it'll on-the-fly switch over to the optimised compiled code.
(PowerShell may be an even better fit than C# for this usage...)
Good that the Powershell and dotNET teams already kinda split and opensourced themselves to avoid that :P
Oh and if you've done anything with REST-APIs or transforming file formats (aka mapping objects and such) then PowerShell is definitely killing it.
That's where it shines and even outperforms python in my eyes. Everything else it is kinda on-pair with python. Except you actually get working explicit typing (should you want to explicitly type something)
+ interop with unmanaged code is easier.
@ShadSterling @raymaccarthy @blinry
Well not just that. The community also for long asked for it and the development team also eyed with breaking out of the corporate Microsoft release cycle if I recall correctly.
@raymaccarthy @ShadSterling @blinry
Because Silverlight was shit, even when compared with Flash and Java browser plugins. But all three got replaced by HTML5 (and when apple denied them on iOS)
@ShadSterling @raymaccarthy @blinry
Netflix probably. I think they used Silverlight as DRM in the early days or something.
@ShadSterling @[email protected] @raymaccarthy @blinry
Yea, because of that I had a Firefox addon that would allow to have "IE-Tabs". But that was before Firefox went downhill...
@simon_brooke @raymaccarthy @blinry
I think they said something like this at one of the powershell converences. But it has been a while. Also I doubt it was monocausal anyhow...
Sounds like you'd want to write a JIT compiler for C tbh...
Well it was your idea. I didn't even say it was possible to pull off. Your idea just sounded like JIT compiled C to me...
Also anyone know what magic https://godbolt.org/ is using under the hood? I'd hope they're not actually running each of these compilers on their system each time you put something in there and somehow do it interpreted? Right?
Then something like that may be able to help.
@agowa338 @blinry I can see how it could sound that way; the mental model I landed on aims to run existing AOT-compiled software unchanged, to maximize compatibility.
godbolt.org gives you a compiler picker and an options field, so each time you put something it actually runs just the compiler you pick - https://xania.org/202506/how-compiler-explorer-works
@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.
@simon_brooke @ShadSterling @blinry
Sounds like you'll have a lot of fun trying to map the ASTs of the code in addition to making interpreters for all languages that aren't interpreted then...
The python IDE. Basically you'd have to make the entire system in an interpreted language. Whatever that may be.
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