<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Hi Peter,</div><div><br></div><div>I'm totally on your same wavelength, I found myself touching the same line of topics as well.</div><div><br></div><div>I was looking for a minimal version of Lively Kernel that I could tinker with a bit more easily in my spare time.</div><div><br></div><div>I didn't find that but I found something similar: the minimal gem that is Morphic.js by Jens Moenig, and thought to port it to CoffeeScript to get myself acquainted with it.</div><div><br></div><div>I prioritised the creation of more documentation - Coffescript encourages some sort of literary programming style via the nimble docco tool. In fact I went overboard and created 4 different documentation cuts to cater for all styles (two with focus on APIs, one with focus on commented code, one with focus on "descriptive overview").</div><div><br></div><div>So I created the Zombie Kernel project here: <a href="https://github.com/davidedc/Zombie-Kernel">https://github.com/davidedc/Zombie-Kernel</a> , which requires no server. Just download and pop in the browser. Code-wise it's a separate project from Morphic.js but as of know they are still in sync and Jens and I keep track and often sync each others' changes.</div><div><br></div><div>It's very compact - I don't have a line count, but it can be read an completely understood in a week-end. Also I'd say around a third of it can be "ejected" for a minimal build.</div><div><br></div><div>I don't have a "minimal build" process yet, but I have your same thoughts on that I want to have a way to create different builds of different sizes. So at any time, even if the project will ever grow bigger, I can always go back and build a 1000-line version that ejects most features.</div><div><br></div><div>I fantasise about SW packages that come in "onion-skin" form - i.e. they can reduce themselves to something I can understand in one afternoon, and then get the next build step understood in another day, and then the next one and the next one...</div><div><br></div><div>Which is not the same as saying that "it comes with extension modules" or more/less extending classes. It's different: I don't wan't to even <i>see</i> the extension mechanism and module loader or the clever/complex class extension mechanism or whatever it is. I want the bare simple thing. E.g. if it is an IDE, I'd like to see it reduce itself to notepad as a "build 0" version. If it's a desktop system, I want it to downsample itself to a command line or to a window system where all windows paint over each other or something like that.</div><div><br></div><div>I don't know whether that's achievable at all :-) but I'd love to give that a shot with Zombie Kernel.</div><div><br></div><div>Also testing will have to be a first-class citizen by necessity (but I can't do TDD - I see how it works well in enterprise but I just can't bring myself to be excited about it in a "hobby" context). I've seen Dan's talk at Google where he mentions that these highly-"composite" systems usually make bugs evident quickly. In my little experience (and from email conversations with Jen) that's not the case with Morphic.js and Zombie Kernel (yet? Is it a matter of scale?) - stuff can break really subtly, so an automated testing mechanism is needed to lighten-up the work...</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Davide</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On 12 Nov 2012, at 22:56, Peter Fraser wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>..or 100 lines, or even 1000 -I'm not trying to reinvent computing here :-)<br><br>I'm not great at reading code, and even something as fiddler-friendly as LK is a bit impenetrable for me -but I like learning by imitation so I'm looking for ideas on where to start imitating.<br><br>If anyone felt like commenting on either of the two questions below, I would be grateful -and it might be fun!<br><br><br><br>A. "Write a micro-lively that just does this..."<br>=======================================<br><br>eg<br><br>What would a ten line LK do? (yes, I really do mean a web page with 10 lines of javascript! *Perhaps* it would use JQuery (or something else general) but no LK code)<br><br>A 100 line LK?<br><br>..a 1000 line LK?<br><br>...3000 lines?<br><br> ...N lines?<br><br>If it had a persistence model, what would it persist?<br><br>What graphics would it target? SVG? HTML? Canvas?<br><br>NB: don't be asking "what are you trying to achieve in this system" :-) -the answer is "the same as LK is trying to achieve!"<br><br>Go on -set me a challenge!<br><br><br>B. "If I was to rewrite LK from scratch I would start like this...."<br>=======================================================<br><br>I'm really probing for both "how LK works" (what sub-systems would you put in place first?) and "what would you do differently?" (not necessarily better, but different directions you might try)<br><br>Would you be tempted by any of: CoffeeScript, Dart, TypeScript, [?] (warning: serious bike-shed peril !)<br><br>Would you take a TDD approach? ( no attitude here btw -I'm a 'rest first' developer myself and i'm not talking about representational state transfer ;-> ). Would you use any of Selenium et al (does LK use such a thing now?)<br><br>Is Git the perfect back end for LK? How important is the back end?<br><br>Would you support four browsers from scratch -or run with one and back-fill (or would you perhaps just pick a single browser?)<br><br><br><br>For extra credit<br>=============<br>Take a few years off and write a self hosting LK, but in a literate programming style so we can look over your shoulder and really see how your kernel comes together. Children, ask your parents first.<br><br><br><br>thanks for any comments at all on such silliness!<br><br>Pete<br><br>btw: (unrelated to the above) great to see Dan's JSConf video with the audience cheering ..and yet so ironic ( ie: how long could Dan's backward clock run before it got to the same level of functionality done in Smalltalk? hmmm )<br><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>lively-kernel mailing list<br><a href="mailto:lively-kernel@hpi.uni-potsdam.de">lively-kernel@hpi.uni-potsdam.de</a><br>http://lists.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/listinfo/lively-kernel<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>