Reflecting on reflective computing.

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Just to reinforce what David Manifold wrote:

After I had been in the computer business for a while, I figured that
I had a choice. If I were to use tools developed by others I was
likely to be able to develop an average of one serious application
per year over the next twenty years. If, in the other hand, I could
create tools that would allow me to reduce that average to just a
month per app, I would still come out four programs ahead even if
it took me 18 years to do it (still four years to go :-).

If you factor in that other people would also benefit from my tools,
it wasn't that hard to choose.

When I sit down to use Self 4.0 released in February 1995 (not by me,
but by people who think exactly like me) and compare it to everything
else available in late 1998, I see that my original predictions were
not at all optimistic!

Why not just layer these new things on top of Linux, you ask? After
all, DOS and Unix were able to add GUIs after the fact with no
problems, right? Of course, other things (multimedia, objects/components
and so on) were not as easy to patch into systems not originally
designed for them. Anyway, my own system (Merlin) will be available as
both a layer on other OSes (Linux first, then Win32) and as a full OS
running on the bare PC hardware. When that happens you will be able to
try both and see for yourself what are the advantages/costs of both
approaches (I have a pretty good idea of what will happen, but you
have no reason to believe me now...).

-- Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr -- mailto: jecel@lsi.usp.br
          http://www.lsi.usp.br/~jecel/merlin.html