I've not tried it yet, but it gives me an impression very similar to that of Forth, in particular ColorForth. Very fascinating.
I think the author would get along with Chuck Moore ({Color,}Forth's original author) very very well, and that they'd resonate on a lot of points. It'd be cool to be a fly on the wall watching that back and forth :P (...pun not intended...)
Also, while a little tricky to discuss, I wanted to point out to whoever finds the site design jarring that this individual seems very open-minded to change and evolutionary development, and to me resembles somewhat of a polymath who only stumbled on the social nature of the Web quite recently. The source code looks very clean, and I suspect the 2010 copyright date I found in the code is not all that far away from the point the site was started at.
I agree. The author describes writing a program as navigating to a block of code, moving a marker, and typing characters into blocks:
> It's really easy to write a program with MSB-OS: you just go into Machine Editor, search for eoc (end of code) in any cell of program code (code cells are typically 16, 32 or 64K in size, though they can be any multiple of 1024 bytes), move eoc to make some space in front of it to write your code in, then type numbers in.
I love it. No IDE. No types No files. Chuck Moore says in an interview (paraphrasing, can't find source)
> I don't understand people's obsessions with "Hello, world" programs. People ask me for them. I tell them, "Navigate to a block in a Forth system, and type, "Hello, world." Done.
Because you're looking at the characters, "Hello world", and the system is completely dynamic, you're looking at a program.
I really need to wrap my head around colorForth's interaction model so I can actually play with it and get a proper feel for how it works. I'll admit I haven't closely examined stuff like http://skilldrick.github.io/easyforth/ (a minimalist Jupyter-esque interactive tutorial using a tiny JS Forth interpreter) but I have enough of a notion to understand that most FORTHs provide a more abstract[ly scoped] generic/conceptual/arbitrary environmental model, while colorForth and similar direct-on-chip environments are effectively machine access accelerators, and my interest lies almost exclusively with the latter - Forth as a programming style is the definitive predecessor of the DSL, so I see no benefit in using it for standardization. (I think this is where a lot of other people sit too, unless I'm misunderstanding the scene).
Further exploration and digging may prove this first impression incorrect, but I get the idea that these types of systems distill the essential moving parts of current computer architectures into a form readily parsed by the brain with minimal effort, and they do so at an arguably mathematically perfect level of irreducible complexity.
My question now is, taking into account the ultra-long-term trends hiding under the surface of the theory of everything/mental model/dev setup/framework/language of the month and identifying the elixirs they're trying to reach for, would it be possible to produce a modern reimagination of these types of environments oriented toward the current architectural and social level of, er, progress? For example, "everything in Ring 0!!" (or the functional equivalent of it) worked great for the Symbolics Lisp Machine as a hacker's box, but everyone's obsessed with putting jails inside containers inside virtual machines now, so such an approach would no longer be found acceptable.
Now it's my turn to not be able to link something - I remember reading recently about someone who described their experience of using a Forth system on their microcomputer, where they could ask the environment they were using to display the internal code routines it would run when functions were called, etc, and it made tinkering with hardware, I/O, etc incredibly easy, since everything was right there, and you could get instant, direct and authoritative answers to questions like "what does this system call do?" and "how do <...> and <...> interact?". The author said that they'd never used something with the same level of interactivity (nil waiting time to get perfect answers, basically) as with that system.
I can, at least, mention https://instagram.com/tr1nitr0n/ aka http://reddit.com/u/thefinder - this guy's restoring a couple of old Symbolics boxes (besides a literal treasure trove of other historic hardware), I'm not sure where he's up to but I wish his success posts four-digit upvotes when they happen :) (He does take visitors, I think, but Seattle's a bit far away for me in Australia.)
Wow! I read /u/thefinder's account of the lisp machine. What a find.
> Forth as a programming style is the definitive predecessor of the DSL, so I see no benefit in using it for standardization.
Yup. I believe that standardization-of-language exists because we're illiterate. My analogy is writing. Any literate person who's been writing for a couple of decades can begin with a blank page and end with a bespoke piece-of-writing that accomplishes the intended goal. Areas of writing where normally-literate people are illiterate are law and programming. In those areas normal people rely on standards and scribes to do the work for them, even if normal people can casually read those writings.
My loose prediction for the future of programming--say 200 years out--is Forth. Start with a blank page, end with a DSL that accomplishes one thing. Everyone will do it, because they'll grow up in a culture that uses it.
The quality you mentioned: everything-is-right-there-ness, to me mirrors the skilled writer using everything to accomplish something.
Again, I'm being loose. Above, I called it a belief.
I think the author would get along with Chuck Moore ({Color,}Forth's original author) very very well, and that they'd resonate on a lot of points. It'd be cool to be a fly on the wall watching that back and forth :P (...pun not intended...)
Also, while a little tricky to discuss, I wanted to point out to whoever finds the site design jarring that this individual seems very open-minded to change and evolutionary development, and to me resembles somewhat of a polymath who only stumbled on the social nature of the Web quite recently. The source code looks very clean, and I suspect the 2010 copyright date I found in the code is not all that far away from the point the site was started at.