[lively-kernel] Purpose of Lively

[Philip Weaver]

This topic from Steve deserves more discussion. Please discuss.

Philip

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Steve Wart <steve at wart.ca> wrote:

>
> One thing that Apple insists on when defining the user experience for a new
> application is to come up with a clear statement of purpose. Not only what
> it is its intended user base (casual, professional, etc.), but also what it
> is explicitly not intended for. What *can't* Lively do?.
>
> I've seen a couple of posts from Dan on his vision for Lively, but I still
> wonder, is it an educational environment, or is it something people can use
> to build commercial quality client-server applications?
>
> Smalltalk evolved in rather unexpected ways I think. I don't think I'm
> looking for Lively on Rails, but I am interested in applications that appeal
> to mainstream development needs.
>
> Steve
>
>
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 11:51 PM, Philip Weaver <philmaker at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Steve,

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Steve Wart <steve at wart.ca> wrote:

> Yes I noticed that you've done a huge amount of work. I asked about the IDE
> because that is how I conceptualize the object model. Once I understand that
> hopefully all the rest of it will come together for me.
>
> One thing that Apple insists on when defining the user experience for a new
> application is to come up with a clear statement of purpose. Not only what
> it is its intended user base (casual, professional, etc.), but also what it
> is explicitly not intended for. What *can't* Lively do?.
>

I'd also consider the role of a user. Is the user primarily a consumer of
content or a producer of content? Lively allows both at the same time.
Sadly, most people in the world today are primarily consumers and not
programmers. I don't have a final answer here but read on further below.
Intended user base is indeed worthy of discussion.


> I've seen a couple of posts from Dan on his vision for Lively, but I still
> wonder, is it an educational environment, or is it something people can use
> to build commercial quality client-server applications?
>

I have interest in pursuing both of these but lean toward the latter,
commercial development: I want to focus on whatever goals will help sustain
and provide funding for this project. I wish and hope that Lively will
become a disruptive technology to transform web development and web
graphics creation. 1. Browser brings the history and bookmarks. 2. The
toolkit brings it's own rendering and layout: whether it be the Lively
Kernel or other. Web standards? Just say no. Use a canvas instead and your
own toolkit. Also relating to graphics development: just say no to splicing
raster images for web display: render them in Lively.

So for intended user base maybe: 1. professional "web" developers but
retrain them, 2. education

Some of the early Lively collateral discusses making web programming simpler
without HTML, CSS, DOM, etc. The problem has been that Lively has not had
enough layout support to realistically compete or replace HTML and DOM.

Philip
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