Re: your thoughts are needed
- From: "tovare@xxxxxxxxx" <tovare@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:01:34 -0800 (PST)
On Dec 28 2007, 9:14 pm, "THEA...@xxxxxxxxx" <THEA...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Have you ever wished computer to do something for you?
What's the thing you wanna the computer help you in?
Imagine the properties of the perfect computer in your opinion?
Imagine .. Think .. and tell us !!
I find it to be a lot of work and ... in a practical sense impossible
to teach the computer all that I know. I end up using crude analysis
in Excel, the occational programming snippet, a multitude of different
applications etc ... I think this could be improved upon.
The perfect computer would probably be one that was so perfectly
implemented that
human language wouldn't have a word to describe it ... or perhaps
only
as a research topic for philosophers. It would be a natural extension
of humanity,
and perhaps encoded into DNA. A number of science fiction authors has
envisioned alien
races which recieves a huge amount of factual knowledge and experience
at birth. This
isn't very realistic however, so to keep things real I would like to
start off 2008
with a comment on present-day technology instead.
There are two evolutionary steps I would like to have undone:
1. Object-Oriented programming.
2. The graphical desktop-metaphore for computer interfaces.
Object orientation:
One useful feature I find in windows is the ability to right-click a
file (Context menu) and find several operation I can do on this file,
for instance open it in several different text-editors, zip-it, email-
it etc. This, at the surface appears to be object oriented, but if you
look behind the sceenes it's not single or multiple inheritance, it
can be implemented using known design patterns, but not really
elegantly. (Used conservatively, the facilities can be used for
meaningful abstractions, but the majority of OO code is crap IMHO).
It is polymorphism ... which I think is good. That is the ability to
say in a program that you understand text-files, but not image files.
Polymorphism describes knowledge, object orientation just makes a lot
of spagetti code and obscures massive use of goto and senseless
indirections in the programming logic.
The graphical desktop:
.... It works for files and folders. We have a bunch of applications
which doesn't work well together and we do need a new application for
just about any task we would like to do. Counter examples, which I
think is sort of in the right direction and has some interesting
ideas:
1. - The Mac OS X automator applicaton
- Yahoo pipes
- Genesys Contact center interaction handling (Including Alcatel
Visual CC for
Premium Edition).
These for easilty creating appliacations on the fly, using simple
logic and polymorphism.
2. The Oberon system (N. Wirth)
For using a simple notation to make a function in the programming
language
visible in the user-interface, and the ability to feed that function
it's
required inputs.
In addition I think the following systems are neat ideas to follow up
on:
YeahWrite - Which in some sense defines a perfect OS for people who
use
computers as an advanced typewriter.
http://www.yeahwrite.com/
Trac - for it's combination of
1. Version control
2. Ease of adding information (Wiki).
3. Defining certain work-processes
a. Ticketing system
b. Discussion forum
c. blog w/comments.
http://trac.edgewall.org/
Inform 7 - for it's excellent use of natural language which is sort
of sci-fi and
the fact that it's a rule based system. Check it out, it's cool:
http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Welcome.html
Have a great new year,
Regards.
Tov Are Jacobsen
.
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