[pyrtsa]

Anybody noticed how closely this, being from the programmer's point of view, is related to what Bret Victor [1] has been talking about from the UI perspective? Take http://worrydream.com/#!/ScrubbingCalculator, or any of the "Kill Math" or "Explorable Xplanations" articles, for an example.

Combining a good UI to the propagators as explained by Sussman in this video, would make a disruptive product on any field where decision making is needed. (Not like such tools didn't exist already in the hands of some, of course.)

[edit] fix typo

[alxv]

I have got the same feeling. It is this idea of moving away from the pencil-and-paper operating system for modeling complex systems. Victor is more about making computing explorable and accessible to the masses, whereas Sussman is more about figuring out new ways to compute things. However, both are basically arguing that our current abstractions are not enough anymore. That is, we need to revisit some of the assumptions that were made 40 years ago about how programs should be structured.

[msutherl]

CNMAT's o.dot library for Max has a similar notion. As messages pass through the systems and affect new results, the resulting message preserves its entire history.