Something Deeper
Some time ago, while on a trip to Canada, I read through book called Prototype-Based Programming: Concepts, Languages and Applications. I found the book facsinating. Each concept resonated with me. However, it was the closing paragraph that will truely stick with me. I decided to preserve it here on my wiki.
Something much deeper lurks at the boundary of prototypes and classes, something that is present also in the tension between the structured worlds of XML and WYSIWYG. It is the tension between loose and structred information. Something deep and important happens between the informal text in an outliner and the structured, formatted copy of a paper or a report. As a result, we need environments and languages that allow us to accommodate our thinking and organizational processes as well as our formal structured processes so that we can communicate and catalog shared information.
I look forward to the day when computer-based tools support my informal, anonymous rights, yet help me to consolidate my experiments easily, so that I can publish them and evolve them in a disciplined way with others.
I hope one day this day comes. 'Cause it's long overdue.