On 28 December 2010 16:58, Alejandro F. Reimondo
<aleReimondo at smalltalking.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> P.S. i think i know the answer to question why "computer revolution
>> didn't happened yet", because every time people inventing something
>> new, they implementing it in C.
>
> Can be more of one reason, e.g. ... because people are still thinking
> in bootstraping... a new genesis... something irrelevant in terms
> of open systems (ambience), like Smalltalk.
> Under the point of view of systems where semantics can change,
> the genesis is only anegdotic. It is more important the sustainability
> of the system itself (the persistence of the self... when contents
> change through time), the survival in case of accidents (after
> sensing damage), and the preservation of identity (been known
> as the SAME systems after changes).
> Many syntax can coexists, and it is related with diversity of
> expression; not with ideals (a mother language/syntax
> to make the first spell).
>
> The change of semantics though actions "outside" the system
> itself make us continue writing programs. oops!
> the Program class is still missing!  :-P
> IMHO, changes in core semantics and the effects of doing the
> changes in the system should be promoted, because
> are important evidence to recognize smalltalk as an open
> system and not as another OO language (the contrary has
> happened during last years, insisting in the importance
> of the "code").
>
Yes, that is a long awaiting promotion , which is not happen yet :)


>> Yes, of course, and C compiler is available anywhere!.. then for
>> bootstrapping the image you will just need sources in a text form..
>
> Image as the snapshot of a system, contains representation
> of objects.. in text or binary; it is only what has been
> stored from a system in the past.
> It is as important as a snapshot of a woman.
> I prefer to invest my time gaining experience with the living woman.
> People that write good poems (code) are forced to
> write another, tomorrow.
>

I think that bootstrapping having a value, as being able to
(re)produce system completely
from human readable text (i.e. source code).

But now, after your post i think that problem is deeper,
and a real reason why we pursuing such idea is that we don't trust computer(s)
to reason about what is system is and what is not.
It is we, who giving the names to classes, it is we, who defining what
is Kernel, and what is optional etc.
>From machine's perspective names mean nothing. But for us, humans - it
is a bridge between our way of thinking
and computer model(s).
Another aspect of it, that probably we want to have a control about
every aspect in the system,
since we have all the source code, which gives us an impression, that
once bootstrapped,
everything in it will run as we predicted and expected.
Which of course not true, giving the failure of C++ or Java (or any
other compile-all-from-sources) based
environments to tame complexity.


> Ah!....
> Another reason for "computer revolution didn't happened yet",
> can be because people still think in terms of computation,
> as systems are still made to compute something.
>

Thanks for good post, Alejandro. It made me look at things at different angle.
Which means i learned something new (and i hope others too).

P.S. i really think that yes, we need to have bootstrapping model(s),
but of course, not in C.

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.