Sun Labs Lively Kernel, Smalltalk like programming using JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

Sun Labs Lively Kernel, Smalltalk like programming using JavaScript

research.sun.com

31 pointsjacquesm14 comments

This has been around awhile and was done in large part by none other than Dan Ingalls himself. :)

Running an entire application environment in the browser like this still gives me pause for concern. On the one hand it'd be great for creating an open community where anyone could modify the code (locally) to do cool things, on the other hand it makes it a lot more difficult to control security if there is a server involved in the mix.

And if there isn't a server involved... what's the point of using a browser then?

So this is a neat technology exercise... but to what end?

You could use WebDAV for persistence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV

So this is a neat technology exercise... but to what end?

To replace operating systems with languages and VM's. Dan Ingalls, the principal researcher behind Lively, is one of the Smalltalk elders. He believes "an operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one".

See: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.h...

VMs running... operating systems?

VM's running on hardware, and providing the services a traditional OS provides as objects.

The Lisp machines did this. Smalltalk was designed first as such a beast. If you look at really old Smalltalk images, you can find the vestiges as four primitive hooks: one for lifting the drive head, one for putting it down, one for moving it in, the other for moving it out.

Not sure this has the "replace the OS aim" to it. From the lively site, "... Rather, it is an experimental system for turning the web as we know it into a universe of objects that are active, accessible, changeable; in short, lively."

OTOH, I've been using Seaside + Squeak/Pharo for a webapp at work and its been awesome to work with. SqueakNOS is pretty exciting too: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1762

But my first reaction to Lively (and still is) is, "what for?" I guess I can't get over having an application in the browser that doesn't need a server. In that case a native desktop app. would be much better. I guess its just experimental :)

"Making it a lot more difficult to control security", in this sense, is a good thing. The only way to secure a client-server system is for the server to never trust the client.

Building capabilities into the language would go a long ways to providing security.

And if there isn't a server involved... what's the point of using a browser then?

Why can't you involve a server? I think this is about the client-side experience. That doesn't mean you have to eliminate the server-side.

Suggestion for a "web os." Take this, or something like it, and put in on an OS where each tab is its own process. Need to install OpenOffice? Fine, but it runs in a "tab." Of course, you can also do some Exposé trick with the tabs. (Isn't the "most visited" page in Chrome and Safari just a sort of web substitute for Exposé?)

Then make a server version! A company with a software toolkit like this could have a key advantage. They could wind up with OS that are 50X more compact, more responsive, yet require fewer resources, while having faster development times and much greater code reuse.

isn't this one of the goals of the Chrome OS?

I hope so!

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