Post BAg8bA4TE2LrHsNkSu by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
 (DIR) More posts by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
 (DIR) Post #BAg5coswfJDkIU5fG4 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @nytpu > everything persistentreminds me of https://ngnghm.github.io/ which I hate in the same way I hate Smalltalkbut I think it could be fun to try on a small scale, like where the whole state fits on one screen
       
 (DIR) Post #BAg8bA4TE2LrHsNkSu by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @nytpu Ok so it's been a long time since I've read it, but IIRC the idea with Houyhnhnm computing is that everything is a giant Smalltalk machine, all state is persistent, no address space isolation, just a soup of objects in a managed language or sth.When I was first reading it, it was unsettling to me for reasons I didn't understand... was I just a blind follower of Unix, and rejecting an alternative way just because it does things differently?1/
       
 (DIR) Post #BAg8oZnYspBaqMrzcW by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @nytpu And then it hit me:We write buggy programs all the time, and they produce corrupted state, and from that point on the behaviour of the program is unpredictable.But if that state is volatile, we can discard it, and restart the program from a known-good state. And that will make the program predictable again.We can use that to avoid the bug.And we can use that to reproduce the bug.Whereas in an immortal Smalltalk machine, an error can propagate forever.2/2
       
 (DIR) Post #BAg8qvShJHFObwEOMy by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @nytpu Which is why I don't like anything with persistent RAM.
       
 (DIR) Post #BAg9aVrYooIMXPb9TE by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @nytpu yeah, hence why I think it can be fun to try and watch how it works.But watching how it works benefits from seeing the whole FRAM on one screen :P