Steve Yegge: Systems should never reboot

When a Smalltalk image saves, it's very analogous to a Windows or Linux box hibernating. The upshot of this -- you can think of the Smalltalk image as something like an OS that has been "up" since 1980! (With periods of hibernation.) The Squeak image is directly derived from the Smalltalk-80 image. The VisualWorks image has been incrementally evolved from it as well. The thing is a program that was brought up decades ago, and has hibernated, been replicated, but has never rebooted!

Steve is right that systems should never have to boot. You can have a whole OS that operates like that. (The Smalltalk image started out as an OS. In the original ST-80 image, there are 4 primitives for moving the drive head out, moving it in, lifting it off the platter, and putting it down!)

> "...they all screwed up lexical scoping."

I have read a number of comments like this recently. I am very curious about what this implies but the person making the statement never gives an explanation.

Yegge at his grand best. But he didn't mention the most lively of all living software: software that gets smarter with use - i.e. makes use of using machine learning. This is the software that feels most alive to its creator and users. It grows like a dog or a child. The software Stevey talks about merely grows like a city.

Welcome to Erlang :)

He missed one: every program expands until it can read email, or is replaced by one that does.