Comment by loup-vaillant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by loup-vaillant | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You must not be familiar with the STEPS project, a complete OS project (with a compiler collection, 2D vector drawing and compositing, desktop publishing, online communications…), in 20K lines of code. Mainstream OSes by comparison are more like 200M lines (10K books).

That stuff is pretty concrete, with an actual GUI and real software. One can get their hands on the source code, though it's really not meant for public consumption (it was a proof of concept, not a commercial product).

Here are the progress reports (latest first):

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2010004_steps10.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2009016_steps09.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008004_steps08.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf

That stuff definitely works out to a vision.

"it was a proof of concept, not a commercial product"

Within that distinction, lies dragons.

The issues I have with existing systems are divided in two categories: bugs/issues/not being polished enough, and conceptual inadequacy.

Most of my issues with actual products fall within the first bucket, because the second bucket actually means I'd want another product. This is where innovation is.

That being said, unlike Kay, I don't loathe what we have. I'd be very happy if it was just better. But, like him, I thin the fact it's bad has deep roots in the way it is conceived.

I think another commenter hit the nail on the head when he said that Kay was mostly disappointed with users.

About Steps specifically, I haven't tried it out, but I harbor a lot of doubt. A huge amount of work goes into making stuff merely tolerable.

Something I do have experience with is Pharo Smalltalk (which I believe is the most advanced offering in the market). In theory, having your own small universe based on coherent principle is heaven. In practice, it feels very constricting to work inside that box (the Smalltalk image), because you don't have access to some of your best power tools, or even to some basic modern niceties.

(Pharo Smalltalk and great, and improving steadily, you should try it out. But I don't see myself calling myself a Smalltalk developer/hacker any time soon.)

Are binaries available, to run in a VM at least? Also, can you provide a link to the source code?

Some software and code are linked here http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/

But not the "STEPS" project's code, apparently.

> One can get their hands on the source code

Where?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com