"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Saturday, March 21, 2009

On Accidentally Pulling The Scroll Bar Off Your Mail System

Dan Ingalls on simple, dynamic languages and systems like Smalltalk or Lively Kernel vs. the typical language and "API" stratification...

Lord knows you can get the Google Web Toolkit and start cranking out Java code for doing these things [browser-based applications]...

...You can't go in a grab hold of part of it and pull it out or change it the way you can in our system...

Now at times you don't want that. You don't want people accidentally pulling the scroll bar off their mail system. But my philosophy has always been: Make it first dynamic and malleable and then you can always turn off those capabilities. But you're in much less of a position to go forward in the world if you start out with stuff that can't be changed.

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About Me

Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.