[racket] Liitin screencast tutorial

Hi Matthias,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthias Felleisen [mailto:matthias at ccs.neu.edu]
> Sent: 05 March 2011 01:01
> To: Jukka Tuominen
> Cc: Gregory Woodhouse; users at racket-lang.org
> Subject: Re: [racket] Liitin screencast tutorial
>
>
>
> Jukka, now that I see the system in action, I have a couple of thoughts:
>
> 1. Its functioning reminds me very much of two distinct ideas:
>  -- David Gelernter's 'stream' idea of file systems
> 	(you don't have files but 'objects with timestamps'
> 	and you can place yourself anywhere on this stream;
> 	you can also mix and match objects from various times
> 	to create a new time; at some point he claimed that the
> 	Mac's time machine is based on that) # Gelernter is the
> 	inventor of the Linda parallelization stuff (80s) and
> 	a victim of the unabomber and a book author/columnist for
> 	newspapers

I need to look into this - sounds beautifully insane! There must be
something to learn from that. How to stay alive, atleast :)
>
>  -- Jeff Siskind's November system for STALIN Scheme
> 	it too was about complete total version control,
> 	in the sense of Gerlernter's stream idea but focused
> 	on Scheme stuff; I do not know whether he ever implemented it.
>
> 	Jeff's STALIN is an abbreviation for Static Language Implementation
> 	November is of course a reference to the Russian revolution

What I've found out, that starting from a little thing, you tend to depend
on more things, so you need to "control" more area, which in turn depend on
even more things, and so on. So, in the end we needed to include the whole
OS into Liitin. But then again, the role of Liitin is still to work as a
simple but generic Turing machine. So, you communicate with it via network,
and it crunches the data in a uniform way.
>
>
> 2. Have you developed portions of Liitin in Liitin? I assume you have
> read the 1999 paper on 'revenge of the son of the Lisp machine'. Perhaps
> you could just start with a 'demo' on how to develop something like it in
> Liitin.
>
> In a way one should re-do the entire code base of Racket in Liitin
> to really test-drive it. I could imagine huge gains, once it is
> polished and stable and ready for the world
>
> -- Matthias

I think I mentioned some time earlier, that the purpose of the provided
environment is like a BIOS. It gets you started, but eventually you want to
bypass it with something more improved.

It would be great to achieve the ultimate system in the end, but we made a
decision not to wait untill then. Intead, we tried to create a system that
you have a theoretical possibility to build it with, and start it right away
with an imperfect system. That's why there is much more stuff included than
necessary, but you can hide it all once you don't need them any more.

You could easily launch a Liitin object that will run a totally new system;
language or even the whole OS. But I still find it important that you can
still keep all the earlier content functional, so all Liitin object should
start from a common seed. In other words, all Liitin objects still should
look the same on the top level, say a single object name, e.g.

(liitin:do-stuff) vs (liitin:do-stuff-in-the-ultimate-way)

I know there are many (near) dead-ends to be expected, but it still feels
naiively interesting to find out what't at the end of the road. Those
examples that you mentioned... they ended well, didn't they? :)

br, jukka
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 4, 2011, at 5:20 PM, Jukka Tuominen wrote:
>
> >
> > So far, we haven't made a "public project accouncement", so
> there is very
> > little information around. It's a standalone OS based on Linux.
> The idea is
> > to provide an instantly ready, uniform and static environment
> in order not
> > to break compatibility among users. Having just said that, it will be
> > possible to access Liitin objects from external systems, and in
> particular,
> > access external systems from Liitin. We have tried both in practise,
> > already.
> >
> > We still make some updates to the system, but we intent to freeze the
> > environment (OS and Liitin engine) eventually, so that the
> development will
> > be made by Liitin objects only there on.
> >
> > It's a new concept, so there is still a lot to explore. We are
> very eager to
> > hear any kind of feedback to develop it further.
> >
> > br, jukka
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Gregory Woodhouse [mailto:gregwoodhouse at me.com]
> >> Sent: 04 March 2011 23:47
> >> To: Jukka Tuominen
> >> Subject: Re: [racket] Liitin screencast tutorial
> >>
> >>
> >> I'm having a hard time finding a link to Liitin objects. Is it
> >> something that can be run in a Linux or OS X environment, or is
> >> it a standalone OS?
> >>
> >> On Mar 4, 2011, at 12:29 PM, Jukka Tuominen wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> JFYI
> >>>
> >>> I just uploaded a simple Liitin screencast tutorial to Youtube. Thanks
> >>> Stephen for the suggestion! This tutorial concentrates on a
> user session
> >>> basics and Liitin objects. It's in three parts due to Youtube's
> >> limitations,
> >>> roughly 30 min. in all.
> >>>
> >>> 1/3:
> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQmAgmss4k
> >>>
> >>> 2/3:
> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IIqx06ENLQ
> >>>
> >>> 3/3:
> >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQwPZXleXPE
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> BTW, Liitin uses now Racket 5.1 with GTK GUIs (all those Liitin
> >> objects in
> >>> the video). Great work Racket team!
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> br, jukka
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> |  J U K K A   T U O M I N E N
> >>> |  m a n a g i n g   d i r e c t o r  M. A.
> >>> |
> >>> |  Finndesign  Kauppiaankatu 13, FI-00160 Helsinki, Finland
> >>> |  mobile +358 50 5666290
> >>> |  jukka.tuominen at finndesign.fi  www.finndesign.fi
> >>>
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