Subject: Re: Is LISP dying? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/21 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3141525678820147@naggum.no> * amoroso@mclink.it (Paolo Amoroso) | Do you mean something like using HTTP and Web browsers as a user interface? I mean specifically the complete and utter absence of user interface -- but instead a powerful protocol interface (no, this is not the "API"). when I was young, this was called "modularization". today, it's called "client/server", but the idea is the same: don't even think in terms of user interfaces. think instead in terms of network protocols, as in: a set of states and variables and how to move from state to state and set variables. however, since both your software and the user interface do their best when they are both in control, a protocol "hub" would be very useful between them. I tend to call them "slaves" and give them the non-trivial task to present a sane and nice world to the "master". personally, I don't think HTTP is powerful enough to do anything that is really useful as a user interface goes, but most browsers would have been with a better protocol. Java might be used to implement just that. I wrote some time ago in answer to "what do you use to format documents" that I let somebody else do it, because I find it too hard to be good at contents and formatting at the same time. the same principle applies to user interface stuff: there are people who are good at that kind of task, and I say let's use people's best set of skills. if they really are good at it, they will also be able to explain exactly what a user interface thus created needs to communicate with the server -- and that's what I think is lacking in most user interface system design: people don't _really_ know what the program and the user interface need to share. #:Erik -- @1999-07-22T00:37:33Z -- pi billion seconds since the turn of the century