Creator of xoscript.com, a simple, server-side, security focused scripting language. I try to bring the script back in scripting languages by practicing restraint when it comes to adding new paradigms and features. XO is very simple, and easy to learn. There are just 5 syntax rules: assign, message, return, chain and group (code blocks, i.e. functions).
XO is pure OO but without classes. Also no traits, no async, no threading, no types, just plain objects. Use with CGI. Runtimes for Linux and OpenBSD.
Would it not be nicer to have a dual boot phone where one OS is baked in rom and only contains certain necessary government/banking/medical service apps and the other is just completely free to use for whatever purpose? Just a thought...
I find the hivemind terribly oppressing at times. AI tools are great, but in the end it seems to me that the results matter most. However we seem to go from hype to hype, again and again. It's all so tiresome. Why can't we just respect individual choices and focus less on the tools and more on the results?
It's a side effect of pass-by-reference. In most languages you have to guess if something is passed by value/ref. In xoscript everything is always a reference.
1. I guess this is just personal taste, we can add aliases if you like. lf (lowercase seems nice). Smalltalk itself uses brk. Could at both. Personally I love the 'touch' of history, makes it seem like there is continuum in tech somehow. But that's just personal taste as well.
2.
['the word 'Hello' has 5 chars']
['I say: "Hi There!"']
['In xoscript we use [' and '] ']
this is not allowed:
['this causes a '] parsing error.']
3.
It's all just message passing.
- {} * x is just message * with arg x
- yes it's a function, which is an object, and it has a method called *
- Smalltalk uses times: { ... } times: 101.
- True is an object
- (i = i) yields True, so you can send a messages to True
- continue/break only work with True
- , means: continue talking to object (True)
Out is used in a static/class-like sense here, hence the uppercase letter. It means it should not be treated as an instance (although it technically does not really matter).
I used PHP, nodejs, Python etc and I just wanted something simpler. I use OpenBSD as my server os and I wanted a scripting language that matches the simplicity (and security) of OpenBSD.
I was having doubts about this too. But in today's (geo)political climate it might be useful. Otherwise I can always delete it. But you're right, it's just a hammer.
I know it's probably not for everyone, but yeah I like the general idea of Smalltalk. However, xoscript does not have the whole vm/image thing. Also no classes, just prototypes. So I guess it sits more between smalltalk and js. You can create a class by overriding the new-method of an object though. That will essentially give you a class.
Thanks, I thought I was the only one noticing this.
One interesting point you make is that young people have a very hard time with the economical situation. A lot of them seem apathetic, they literally say to me that they don't want to work because they cannot afford anything anyway (here in the Netherlands the housing prices are insane, an simple appartment now costs half a million euros in the Hague, and that's not even the city center).
That's nice, but tiktok seems such a weird way of sharing it. I mean, how can you search for certain recordings/performances or discuss it? It's just an ever going list of movies, with no structure, you cannot even predict what comes next... It seems hard to follow someone at all. You just have to wait until a certain clip comes along. It's total chaos. But like I said, maybe I am just getting too old.
I showed them my game on the c64 ;-) No, I talked a lot with my elders when I was young. And I also talked a lot about tech to millenials when they were young, even helped them to learn coding or other tech. It's just that the youngest generation seems so insanely hard to reach. Or maybe I am just getting too old.
Well, every young person I know is constantly glued to the phone watching tiktok. I don't mean to be negative. I installed tiktok myself, but I could not really understand what they like about it. Maybe you can explain? I tried to understand (seriously), kept swiping etc, but it simply did not work for me. I would love to understand them better. But that's the point. It's hard to communicate with them. They seem very shy.
Plan9 is by far the most fascinating computer operating system I have ever seen. Truly amazing. This is a whole new level of out-of-the-box thinking... Does anyone know if there are any books about this OS?
As many others here have pointed out, we stumble upon a fundamental issue with blockchains here. The thing that's inside the blockchain can be verified but as long as it points to something in the physical world or to be more precise, outside the chain, you have a weak link. People can ignore to respect the NFT, or simply choose to reject it. Tokens in themselves have no intrinsic value, unlike a painting, a commodity (like gold or even uranium). Of course, there is one exception to this; money. That's why bitcoin was a slightly better idea (but it suffers from different problems in my opinion). The ultimate conclusion for me at least is this one, ownership, art, justice (legal blockchains, smart contracts), these are all social problems and they cannot be solved with mere technology. Technology may help of course, but in the end I strongly believe that social problems require social solutions, not technical ones. For instance, consider bitcoin, with a 51% attack you could gain control over the chain, with PoS big stakers have control, this means you just traded the bankers of today with some other bankers. In the case of NFT, you could have a token that indicates you're the owner of a painting, but if that painting is stolen and sold by people who don't care about your NFT, what's the point? Stealing, in this case is a social problem, not a technological one.