[Seaside] question about avi quote

[Avi Bryant]

On Aug 31, 2006, at 12:20 PM, Dustin Lee wrote:

> I saw Avi speak at OSCON and have been working on a test migration  
> of a python/quixote/sqlobject application as I find time.  I'm very  
> excited about seaside so far.
>
> During his talk he gave a quote that I can't remember who it was by  
> or in what context but I thought someone on this list might know.
>
> The quote was something to the effect:  "The history of programming  
> has been from global state to local state" (or something like  
> that).  I believe he mentioned this when talking about how the use  
> of codeblocks and other seaside-isms make it so you don't even need  
> to give names to many things.
>
> If this quote rings a bell for any one I'd be interested to learn  
> more about the concept/context.

The quote is from my friend Graydon Hoare, author of Monotone, who  
now works for Mozilla.

"I have an ongoing thesis at the moment which I'm exploring in the  
programming language literature, which is that programming language  
features do well (all other things being equal) when they eliminate  
either distant or dynamic state and replace it with either close or  
lexical state. the underlying point being that we may favour language  
features that facilitate copying and modifying small bits of code --  
fragments which work in their new context -- as a fundamental  
programming activity."

http://www.advogato.org/person/graydon/diary.html?start=105

Cheers,
Avi