[Cuis-dev] Dynabook and education

[ken.dickey at whidbey.com]

On 2020-06-17 06:53, Douglas Brebner via Cuis-dev wrote:

> In Smalltalk, we currently subdivide Computers into Images which are
> further subdivided into Objects. Images are as powerful as the
> surrounding computer but Objects are not as powerful as the
> surrounding Image.
> 
> Why not?
> 
> Can we make them so and would it help simplify the system even further?

One of Smalltalk's great assets is that it is made for how people do 
things.

Being able to crash and image and replay one's work until "just before 
the crash", being able to save an image on an Intel based Mac 
workstation to a thumb drive and then continue on an Arm based notebook, 
having great tools to find things, live debug & continue..

The _usage_ ecosystem is what keeps Smalltalk vibrant.  We still have 
objects from the '80s because of this.  Software can outlive hardware by 
a large margin.

I have looked at Erlang.  Live update and live failover are pole star 
goals.

My questions are around the proper model to communicate with and the 
support environment which I can explain and orient in.

As someone said "if you can afford to fail, you can do it in any 
programming language.  We can't afford to fail".

The thing about computer mediated technology is that it allows us to 
share.

I am delighted to hear the discussion around enabling support for people 
to do and to share.

$0.02,
-KenD