[jeffreyrogers]

>And I think it should be obvious: You've built bridges for thousands of years, so you expect you're pretty good at it now, and yet there are still improvements in bridgemaking today

Right, and I'm not saying programming won't improve. It obviously has. No one wants to write a web app in C++ or assembly. What I'm specifically taking issue with is the idea that there is some sort of monumental change out there that is going to enable us to do... what exactly?... well no one can really answer that, but the claim is that it is big and exciting and will change everything.

[avmich]

VPRI (vpri.org) was already mentioned here. The goal of Alan Kay, as I understand it, to reduce complexity of computer systems - by making them smaller. k shows you potential results with this approach - doing things differently, you can have small and functional systems, so they could be easier to understand while remaining feature-rich.

[geocar]

When I can fit my program on the screen, I don't make any mistakes.

I think this is true of most programmers.

While "hello world" type programs tend to be the pedagogical example, kOS demonstrates that the complexity of such a one-screen low-defect program is much higher than people previously thought.

[MichaelGG]

Not being facetious, but does this extend to using larger screens, multiple screens, wider columns or multiple windows, and smaller fonts? Or was one screen just meant as an estimate for 200 lines or so?

[geocar]

I think it is the act of scrolling or window-switching or head-moving that is the cost. To that end, I find using a MBA screen to be perfectly adequate for programming because it fits entirely in my field of view.

My screen is about 55 lines tall and maybe 170 characters wide. I sometimes shrink or increase the font slightly to make programs fit on screen.