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A comment on Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? (1978) [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by analog31 on Monday December 19, 2016 @12:36PM (#13213178)
All this gets me thinking back to the micros and how they booted straight into a BASIC interpreter.

I grew up in that era, and I'm still nostalgic about it. On the other hand, a tablet PC plus Jupyter/Python comes pretty darn close to satisfying that need.

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Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by digi_owl on Monday December 19, 2016 @04:05PM (#13214956)
I dunno. Current tablet offerings seems to be stuck either as a entertainment appliance, or straddling that and desktop Windows.

Microsoft screwed up badly when they decided you can't put a Metro style interface on a Win32 program and get touch support that way.

You either have to make it a Metro app (and ship it via their store), massively curtailing what you can do, or stay with the Win32 WIMP. And even when you tweak the size of various Win32 elements it is still a mess to operate via touch.

Edit: and using jupyter with a tablet strikes me as accessing a mainframe from a terminal (something a micro could act as with the right software).

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Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by analog31 on Monday December 19, 2016 @05:09PM (#13215419)
It's certainly not as good as it could be. I have a "convertible" laptop, where the screen detaches from the keyboard to become a tablet. It runs Windows 10, so I can run the Jupyter server and a browser directly on the device. I've also played with Azure Notebooks, but I don't always have Internet access.

This isn't my only computer, and indeed doing anything with code from a touch screen is marginal at best, but at least it's possible. On a bigger computer, of course I get a bigger screen and keyboard.

Admittedly, I had to look up what Metro and WIMP are. I'm not actually trying to create apps that others can use. My use of programming is largely for my own productivity and learning.

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Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by taeric on Monday December 19, 2016 @06:53PM (#13216108)
What makes jupyter/python closer to this than booting into emacs? (With something like org-mode?)

Just the point/click nature of jupyter?

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Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by analog31 on Monday December 19, 2016 @09:42PM (#13216983)
That's a good question. I've built systems that boot into a command prompt, and booting into emacs wouldn't be too big a step away from that. But what always seems to happen is that after a while the nostalgia wears off and I remember why I like my Jupyter.

I guess it's the REPL-on-steroids nature of Jupyter that I like. Also, having inline matplotlib graphs is pretty killer.

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Re:Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style? ... by taeric on Monday December 19, 2016 @09:48PM (#13217016)
If you haven't, check out org mode in emacs. It can also inline graphs easily. With ready to go bindings for Python, graphviz, gnuplot, and R. (C-c C-x C-v will show charts inline with default bindings.)

My favorite is grabbing logs with a shell block. Reshaping with elisp or Python, and then charting with gnuplot. All in one file with an iterative workflow.

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