Web-Lisp? Oh no!

[Fare Rideau]

> Again, my vision is to have ONLY a web-browser interface to this SilkOS.
Uh? web-browsers are to user-interfaces what CPP (the C Pre-Processor)
is to macro languages.
Why would anyone want to use such *crap* at all?
With Lisp OS, we could develop real user-interfaces for distributed objects,
compared to which the Web will look as pitiful as it is.
Of course, a Lisp-OS based browsers can *also* read the WWW,
execute Java crap, and the like.

Your web-browser only stuff reminds me of Unix' tty-only UI paradigm.
This just plain SUCKS. Another piggy fascistic read-only-minded limitation.
I, for one, would like a speech interface;
the blind and deaf will also appreciate braille interfaces;
VR dudes will appreciate 3D VR interface, etc.
Why limit interface to hard-coded current technology,
when there are so many good things possible?

IMNSHO, programs should be written in a way
that virtualizes all of the interface,
so that people would basically
define new objects and concepts by their semantics,
and let the system manage the interface
in a whatever way pleases the user: text console, wimp interface,
speech pak, braille console, VR glasses, cybersex suits,
telegraphist's morse code terminal, telepathic interface, smell interface,
or whatever.

Of course, you're *free*
a) to develop a web-browser only interface that we wouldn't use
b) to not use all the nice highly interactive stuff that we'll develop

> Why? Because that means anything developed with it
> is immediately, by definition, deployable on the web.
And why would we want everything we do to be deployable
on the web to begin with?
The web is a bad joke at both a document specification and
a document retrieval system (sure better than nothing, though,
much like a free Unix is better than no free OS).

> That is what has value in the marketplace, not Lisp or objects itself.
> It is this high productivity to deploy on the web which is key.
You're *wrong*. What has value in the marketplace is a standard
for dynamically manipulating object. No other language than Lisp (currently)
has the least chance of providing that. All the current stuff
is a set of kludges and workarounds to get an approximation of
what would be trivial with a LispOS.

Don't believe people are more stupid than they are.
Sure, they will be skeptical at first, and that's normal.
But again, if we focus on good code and clean design instead of marketing,
then we shall overcome.
A good free software will always find marketroids to make money with it...
After all, if you don't believe in a LispOS,
you should better do another project!

> Just another LispM development platform doesn't buy us much
> in the marketplace.
It's not "Just Another". There just no such thing as a comprehensive
Lisp environment that works on standard computers,
not to talk about a free one. Or if there is (at affordable price),
tell me, and I leave the project!

> If one believes JAVA is really going to "take over",
> then the really smart developer will just join the bandwagon.
>
JAVA won't. C++ is so crappy that even a "better C++" is crappy.
Reminds me of a joke about Mandrake the Magician:
when his car is broken, he could use hypnosis to convince his fellows
that the car is up again; he just couldn't use hypnosis to convince the *car*
that the car is up again.
Marketroids can make JAVA popular;
they just can't make it a useful language that will solve people's problems.

== Fare' -- rideau@ens.fr -- Franc,ois-Rene' Rideau -- DDa(.ng-Vu~ Ba^n ==
Join the TUNES project for a computing system based on computing freedom !
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