[barnacs]

I haven't read the paper yet but the idea looks promising.

I've had this itch myself for a long time. I can't quite put my finger on it but we really need something like a high level assembly language. One that incorporates high level concepts like networked computers, cryptographic identites for users, access to a global, shared pool of data and algorithmic primitives regardless of which application they were originally written for, or what domain specific higher level language they were created in.

Like, once a user has entered their address into a computer, they shouldn't ever have to enter it again in a different software. Once someone has written an algorithm which takes input x and produces output y, noone should ever have to rewrite it again, but everyone should be able to reuse it. Applications shouldn't all indvividually handle transferring data between devices of the same user or even between users, this should be already built into our programming model. And so on.

If this sounds like some utopian dream or incoherent babble, that's because it probably is at this point. But I'm convinced this is the future of computing we should be aiming for, not piling up more stuff onto our existing stack that's just barely held together by ~50 year old technolgies built for that age.

[rtens]

Wow that's exactly how I feel. I couldn't even formulate it that well. But I'm very happy to know that other people feel this itch as well.

Your sentiment of "aiming for the future we want" instead of "piling up more stuff on our existing stack" reminded me very much of this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o