> How are you planning to accomplish that?
Thanks for asking. Two major ways: on the hardware side I want to use small and simple systems. The raspberry pi is a little more complex than what I want. On the software side I have a simple GUI and macro language that is easy to learn and much much simpler and more elegant than current conventional UIs.
> On the hardware side I want to use small and simple systems
If you'd like to build a fully understandable computer, you might be interested in concatenative languages like Forth, Factor, and colorForth. These use a much simpler and more understandable, typically stack-based computational model that run on microcontrollers like STM32. You can create more complex words by composing together simple assembly-language-like atoms and building higher and higher layers of abstraction.
- https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor/FAQ/Why%3F
- Motivation section from: https://bernd-paysan.de/why-forth.html
> On the software side I have a simple GUI and macro language that is easy to learn and much much simpler and more elegant than current conventional UIs.
A good starting point or source of inspiration might be the Smalltalk and Lisp Machines from the past.
- Introduction to the Smalltalk Programming Language: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1241904/Introduction-to...
- How Do I Master The Art of Smalltalk? https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-master-the-art-of-Smalltalk?s...
- Live Objects in Smalltalk Pharo: https://www.quora.com/What-is-this-live-objects-in-Smalltalk...
- Smalltalk Principles: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk....
You might also be interested in this blog from a guy who is trying to build his own OS from scratch and run it on an FPGA: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=55 Some of his earlier writings about Symbolics Open Genera and Lisp machines are also quite interesting and might be a good source of ideas and principles: http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=8&paged=5
This piqued my interest. I've talked with some older people who had computers in their home during childhood and they told me about tinkering with them and so on. Those were of course much simpler machined than we have today, and I ended up feeling like they had a more intimate relationship with the computer than their younger counterparts. How are you planning to accomplish that?