As an org-mode/Emacs users I smile finding people keeping reinventing the wheel. It's not a sore critics to the SB devs of course but a general observation.
The classic so-called Greenspun's tenth rule [1] it's not just about Lisp but general: classic systems built with the concept of "the OS is the SOLE and UNIQUE fully-integrated end-users application in the desktop" is the rule to follow.
Sure, sometimes peoples have issues understand how such systems can work, so trained in modern ones, but just think about something you buy on-line:
- you get some mails (order confirmation, payment, shipping, ...)
- you get one or more bank transactions
- you might have some notes on some new assets, like a note about how to use the device, periodic maintenance, ...
ALL such "digital things" are separate data on separate apps but for you they are "just a set of things". Why having them separated then? Why you can't just collect/search them in a single UI? In org-mode/Emacs we can achieve something like that, in classic systems it was a normal desktop computing task.
That's what we lost in decades of commercially-driven development, even in FLOSS land...
[1]
#+begin_quote
Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
#+end_quote
The SB author speaking here. I hear you. I used emacs heavily for a few years and of course it inspires a lot of this. I see SB as a somewhat pragmatic reinvention of many emacs ideas. It doesn’t try to be as broadly applicable as emacs though.
While it’s almost impossible to innovate on what has been done in emacs over the decades, I think we can refresh some the things that make it powerful with a fresh coat of paint, to make it more accessible to a “younger generation.”
and COUNTLESS others, similarly many "new stuff"/innovations appear and are actually partial, limited and limiting solutions to problems already solved decades ago in a more broad and superior way.
Emacs itself is a bit horrific in the sense that it's codebase is hard to be kept up by modern developers who have troubles knowing it, but at least represent the classic model. If we lost the memory of the past it will takes decades to reach the level of evolution we have already achieved witch is really a shame.
Anytime I see new software, yours, LogSeq, some "new shiny file manager", Tiidly Wiki and so on, witch actually are a BIG effort to achieve something already existing with far less efforts thanks to an already made ecosystems who makes their development easier I have a sore smile: end users suffer from limits of modern software, DEVELOPERS suffer equally because craft something on top of modern systems it's equally terrible but we seems to be unable on one side to reach again a critical mass of users to being able to innovate again, on the other sides most people simply ignore the past so ignore what's lost.
A stupid example: link an email in SB means essentially or support a specific MUA, tracking it's evolution since breaking changes might happen all the time or add an MUE inside SB. In Emacs it's just a simple function since anything is already there. In Plan 9 to cite a project often considered hostile from and to Emacs write an MUA is damn simple limiting mails to Plan 9 itself, an MUA it's just a specific viewer of some text stream read form some user-configured filesystems mounts and so on.
The sore part is that's I can easy state the above, even in my poor English, but I have no practical solution because resurrecting the classic model for present times demand an effort ONLY a public funded body or a large community can made. We have dismissed "for business reasons" essentially all public research and we have essentially pushed to irrelevance all communities...
Comments
As an org-mode/Emacs users I smile finding people keeping reinventing the wheel. It's not a sore critics to the SB devs of course but a general observation.
The classic so-called Greenspun's tenth rule [1] it's not just about Lisp but general: classic systems built with the concept of "the OS is the SOLE and UNIQUE fully-integrated end-users application in the desktop" is the rule to follow.
Sure, sometimes peoples have issues understand how such systems can work, so trained in modern ones, but just think about something you buy on-line:
- you get some mails (order confirmation, payment, shipping, ...)
- you get one or more bank transactions
- you might have some notes on some new assets, like a note about how to use the device, periodic maintenance, ...
ALL such "digital things" are separate data on separate apps but for you they are "just a set of things". Why having them separated then? Why you can't just collect/search them in a single UI? In org-mode/Emacs we can achieve something like that, in classic systems it was a normal desktop computing task.
That's what we lost in decades of commercially-driven development, even in FLOSS land...
[1] #+begin_quote Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. #+end_quote
-- Philip Greenspun ~1993
The SB author speaking here. I hear you. I used emacs heavily for a few years and of course it inspires a lot of this. I see SB as a somewhat pragmatic reinvention of many emacs ideas. It doesn’t try to be as broadly applicable as emacs though.
While it’s almost impossible to innovate on what has been done in emacs over the decades, I think we can refresh some the things that make it powerful with a fresh coat of paint, to make it more accessible to a “younger generation.”
Thanks for reply and for have shared your project first!
That's what scare me, again in general: I see regular small complaint of modern absurdity, posts like:
- https://tiramisu.bearblog.dev/your-desktop-is-not-a-destinat... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33838697
- https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/61535.html
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/epitaph-to-laptops...
- https://rsapkf.org/weblog/q2z/
- https://tomcritchlow.com/2022/04/21/new-rss/
- https://jfm.carcosa.net/blog/computing/usenet/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33510169
- https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28363453
- https://github.com/akkartik/teliva
- https://akiflow.com/
- https://onezero.medium.com/the-document-metaphor-desktop-gui...
- https://den.dev/blog/user-hostile-software/
- https://www.charlieharrington.com/smart-phone-dumb-terminal/
- https://mattmower.com/2021/08/02/what-we-lost/
and COUNTLESS others, similarly many "new stuff"/innovations appear and are actually partial, limited and limiting solutions to problems already solved decades ago in a more broad and superior way.
Emacs itself is a bit horrific in the sense that it's codebase is hard to be kept up by modern developers who have troubles knowing it, but at least represent the classic model. If we lost the memory of the past it will takes decades to reach the level of evolution we have already achieved witch is really a shame.
Anytime I see new software, yours, LogSeq, some "new shiny file manager", Tiidly Wiki and so on, witch actually are a BIG effort to achieve something already existing with far less efforts thanks to an already made ecosystems who makes their development easier I have a sore smile: end users suffer from limits of modern software, DEVELOPERS suffer equally because craft something on top of modern systems it's equally terrible but we seems to be unable on one side to reach again a critical mass of users to being able to innovate again, on the other sides most people simply ignore the past so ignore what's lost.
A stupid example: link an email in SB means essentially or support a specific MUA, tracking it's evolution since breaking changes might happen all the time or add an MUE inside SB. In Emacs it's just a simple function since anything is already there. In Plan 9 to cite a project often considered hostile from and to Emacs write an MUA is damn simple limiting mails to Plan 9 itself, an MUA it's just a specific viewer of some text stream read form some user-configured filesystems mounts and so on.
The sore part is that's I can easy state the above, even in my poor English, but I have no practical solution because resurrecting the classic model for present times demand an effort ONLY a public funded body or a large community can made. We have dismissed "for business reasons" essentially all public research and we have essentially pushed to irrelevance all communities...