115 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
115 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
= render "pages/project/menu"
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%h1= title "RubyX, where it started"
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.row
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%p
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Torsten Ruger started this on 10.04.2014 after having read the Blue Book 20 years earlier.
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The main ideas were:
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%p
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%ul
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%li Mikrokernel
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The microkernel idea: anything that can be left out, should, puts a nice upper limit
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on things and at the same time provides a great cooking pot for everyone else to try out their ideas.
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%br
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Given gems and bundler this also seems an obvious choice. I really hope to see things i hadn't even thought of.
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%li Layers represent an interface, not an implementation
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It is said that every problem in computing can be solved by adding another layer
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of indirection. And so we have many layers, which, when done right, help us to
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understand the system. (Read, layers are for us, not the computer)
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But implementing each layer comes with added cost, often unnecessary.
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%li Empowerment
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I like the openness of ruby. Everyone can do what and how they want.
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And change other peoples code in an easy and sensible way.
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The best ideas survive and even better ones are coming.
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Friendly competition as it were, cooperation, independent improvement all make
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ruby gems better all the time.
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%br
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But ruby itself has not benefited from this in the same way (ie by ruby developers), because it is not in ruby.
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%br
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%li To get it done
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Beats me why this hasn't been done before.
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.row
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%h1.center Thanks
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%p.center This would not have happened without:
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/ About Us
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.row
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.tripple
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%h2.center Smalltalk
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%p
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Smalltalk is the mother of OO for me. Adele Goldberg has written down the details of early implementations in the
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Blue Book, which made a great impression on me. Having read it, mri code is quite easy to understand.
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%br/
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Unfortunately Smalltalk was too far ahead of it's time and used the image, the implications of which are still
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not understood imho.
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%br/
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Additional bad luck struck when, in Steven Jobs great heist of the PARC UI, he did not recognise the value of it's
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implementation language and so pure OO did not get the same boost as the gui. Instead we got difficult c dialects.
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.tripple
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%h2.center Ruby and Rails
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%p
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After years of coding Java, Ruby was a very fresh wind. Smalltalk reborn without the funny syntax or image.
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Instead of the image we now have gems, git and bundler, so code exchange has never been easier.
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%p
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Rails has sort of given Ruby it's purpose and made it grow from a perl like scripting language to a server programming
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environment with all the whistles and bells. Rails maturity and code quality make it not only a joy to use,
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but an excellent source for good ruby practises.
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%p
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.tripple
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%h2.center Synthesis
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%p
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Synthesis is a microkernel OS written
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in the 80's by Alexia Massalin which not only proves the validity of the microkernel idea, but also
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introduces self modifying code into, of all places, the OS.
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%p
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Alexia has raised questions about the nature of code and ways of programming which are still unresolved.
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I regularly reread the thesis and especially the chapter on
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%a{:href => "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaject"} Quajects
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in the endeavour to understand what
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they are in any higher language terms.
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.row
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.span12.center
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%p Many other steps on the way that have left their mark:
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.row
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.span1
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.span10
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%p
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%b
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%a{:href => "http://judy.sourceforge.net/"} Judy
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has been a major source of inspiration and opened new
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ways of thinking about data structures and indeed coding. It has been the basis of two databases i wrote and together
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with Synthesis redefined the meaning of speed for me.
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%p
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%b
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%a{:href => "http://metasm.cr0.org/"} Metasm
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finally confirmed what i had suspected for a while.
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Namely that you don't need C to generate machine code. Metasm has be been assembling, deassembling and
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compiling for several cpu's since 2007, in 100% ruby.
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A great feat, and the only reason i don't use it is because it is too big (for me to understand).
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%p
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%b
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/cyndis/as"} As
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ended up being the starting point for the assembly layer.
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It was nice and small and produced working ARM code, which is what i wanted,
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as raspberry is arm.
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%b
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%a{:href => "https://github.com/seattlerb/wilson"} Wilson
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got assimilated for similar reasons, ie small and no dependencies.
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%p
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%b
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%a{:href => "http://kschiess.github.io/parslet/"} Parslet
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is great, thanks Kasper!
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Parslet makes parsing possible for everyone.
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%p
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%b
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%a{:href => "http://bundler.io/"} Bundler
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just makes you wonder how we managed before.
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Thanks to Yahuda for starting it, and Andre for making it fantastic.
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.row
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%p
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Lastly, but most importantly there is a spiritual side to this too.
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Actually to anything i have done for at
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least 15 years, and i just mention it
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= succeed "," do
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%a{:href => "spiritual.html"} here
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