Re: designers as users etc.

[Alaric Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

Quoting "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>:

> Every now and then I get back to computing history.  Partially I do it
> to figure where things came from, but I'm always looking for something
> that looks like it might fit with XML.  The passage below, quoted in
> Steven Levy's _Hackers_, is one such possible fit.

You would probably be interested in Lisp, where everything (code and data)
fitted into a tree-structured universal data model, which was nice. It was less
verbose than current XML and people found it quite practical to write code in.

(if	(= x y)
	(print "X is equal to Y!")
	(print "X doesn't equal Y!"))

 - that sort of thing.

(person	:name	"Alaric"
	:email	"alaric@alaric-snell.com")

...the cynic in me also compells me to point to COBOL and SQL, which by making
everything "human readable" by using verbose words instead of shorthand symbols,
were intended to allow semi-skilled people to interact with databases and write
code. It was going to revolutionise the computer industry.

> There are times when I wish I was a better programmer, and could just
> go
> out and write these things instead of talking about them.  I do it
> when
> I can.  For today, though, I'll just hope that my continuing interest
> in
> history has unearthed a nugget which might be intriguing to people.

I know the feeling... I could really do with a team of groupies, burning with
the desire to work on interesting projects but without interesting projects to
work on! I know such beasts exist, since I keep finding clusters of people who
used to be in this state until they found a project!

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software