
The Magic Schoolbook O.S. Project - vmorgulis
http://www.magicschoolbook.com/computing/os-project
======
i336_
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.

~~~
delish
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.

~~~
i336_
The lack of an IDE is incredibly liberating, I agree.

And you're right:
[http://www.strangegizmo.com/forth/ColorForth/msg00490.html](http://www.strangegizmo.com/forth/ColorForth/msg00490.html)

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/](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/](https://instagram.com/tr1nitr0n/) aka
[http://reddit.com/u/thefinder](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.)

~~~
delish
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.

------
chc4
On jeez. I got halfway through the post reading it as "Magic Schoolbus" the
entire time, and was very confused...

------
bitwize
It's like the lovechild of colorForth and TempleOS... the ultimate in OS
outsider art.

