On Wed, 2013-01-16 at 03:54 +0100, Rob T wrote: […] > I was just a while ago thinking that a reason why text based > programming has been so predominant may be that the ability to > transmit and discuss programming problems are much easier to do > when the program is represented in written form.
But this does not predicate that the stored form is a text file, just that it has to have a text rendering. > The minute you move to what could be a much more efficient and > effective method of programing, you suddenly lose the ability to > easily transmit the source code to other people. For example, it > is very easy to post code samples in this forum for discussion, > but if we represented programs in graphical form, we would have > to upload images instead which not quite as easy to do. Why? Smalltalk embodied all these problems and Smalltalk programmers have no difficulty sharing. > Another issue at hand, is when collaborating over the wire with > Git and other revision control systems, none of them operate > effectively when using encoding methods that are not text based. > Revision control systems just don't work well with binary files. This is a big problem even with binary diff techniques. This is likely the molehill that will be turned into a mountain so as to preserve the standard model of text files for source code. > Having said this, there may still be better ways of representing > programs that do not lose the advantages of text based > programming, but what those methods look like is not so obvious. See Smalltalk. The problem to solve is how to not rely on images the way Smalltalk does. This was a soluble problem 20 years ago but no-one with money was interested. Hopefully in the coming finding round the modern versions of those ideas will get funded. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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