A terrible name for a revolutionary old idea.
Why is source code in files?
I’ve seen the Smalltalk solution to this, to have everything be “live” all the time, in the image.
This talk presents Interlisp as an ancestor for a generalized version of the same concept: having the source code for a program be an artifact that is managed by a different program.
Some quotes, for those who like this sort of stuff:
- “ideology of source code in files”
- “A program is a value inside another program”
- “Source code is shared mutable state between developers and the project”
- “Languages have nothing to say until the code is written, it doesn’t start until after the file is saved”
- “codebase as a structured object”
Abacus Noir 