Jonathan Edwards

May 11, 2006May 11, 2006

Subtext on Rails

My recent proposal to work on modeling capabilities fell flat, but elicited some good discussion of future directions for Subtext. Peter Marks wrote:

… I would rather see a complete re-examination of what lies underneath the World Wide Web. And then take the Subtext approach of banishing syntax, treating program as data, history, etc. … This would mean initially abandoning the UI demo and focusing more on the development of a system/infrastructure that works with and within the Internet.

Macneil Shonle wrote:

I wonder what “Subtext on Rails” would look like?

Continue reading “Subtext on Rails”

May 7, 2006May 7, 2006

Open Subtext

Bowing to popular demand, I am releasing the source of Subtext. It can be downloaded from http://subtextual.org/subtext.zip. It can be imported as an Eclipse project. Continue reading “Open Subtext”

May 2, 2006May 2, 2006

Plan A

The comments on Plan B have changed my mind (a rare occurrence in the blogosphere). Continue reading “Plan A”

April 25, 2006April 25, 2006

Subtext faces enormous obstacles to becoming an accepted programming language. It is still just a sketch, missing crucial pieces. But even as I slowly fill it out, I am encountering unyielding resistance. There is a great deal of skepticism about the whole idea of non-textual programming, due to the past failures of Visual Programming Languages. Overcoming that bad reputation will require proof that the UI and VM can scale to industrial-strength, and that there are unequivocal productivity benefits. I can’t do that alone, and it seems that I won’t get much help (particularly from the academic community) until I can first overcome the skepticism. Chicken and egg. Modern programming languages have dug a deep rut over the last 50 years, and dislodging them will not be easy. It will require finesse. Continue reading “Plan B”

March 10, 2006March 10, 2006

First Class Copy & Paste

I have posted a draft of my latest OOPSLA submission: First Class Copy & Paste. As always, comments are welcome.

I apologize that this paper is so hard to read. It is very technical and formal, and all about internals, not the user interface. I felt that I needed to precisely define how Subtext works, both for myself, and for others who want to try to do something similar. A secondary goal was to document the idea of hypothetical computation that is in the demo. I also added a cool new idea: transactional concurrency. But few people will wade through the technicalities to get to that part. I probably should write a more accessible paper about hypotheticals and transactional concurrency.