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January 2007 Anything You Can Do, I Can Do MetaSpace tourist and billionaire programmer Charles Simonyi designed Microsoft Office. Now he wants to reprogram software. By Scott Rosenberg
On April 9, at a remote launchpad on the plains of Kazakhstan, a ground controller will finish his countdown; a Soyuz rocket will fire; and Charles Simonyi--Microsoft's former chief architect, the tutelary genius behind its most famous applications, the inventor of the method of writing code that the company's programmers have used for 25 years, and now the proponent of an ambitious project to reprogram software--will begin his ascent into space. Snug in a Russian space suit, feeling four Gs pressing him down into a form-fitting molded seat liner, the 58-year-old billionaire will become the fifth space tourist to visit the International Space Station. The journey, which will cost Simonyi around $20 million, will fulfill his dream of becoming a "nerd in space" (to borrow one name he chose for the website that documents his extraterrestrial adventure: www.nerdinspace.com). It will also give him an opportunity to view our planet from above and beyond. This has always been Simonyi's preferred vantage. In a career spanning four decades, every time he has confronted some intractable problem in software or life, he has tried to solve it by stepping outside or above it. He even has a name for his favorite gambit: he calls it "going meta." In his youth in 1960s Hungary, he learned the basics of computing on an antiquated Soviet mainframe powered by vacuum tubes, then engineered his own escape to the West. In the 1970s, at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), as part of the team that invented personal computing, Simonyi wrote the first modern application: a word processor that banished the complex codes then used to tag text and displayed a document as it would look on paper. Whether in his Stanford University doctoral dissertation on a "meta-programming" approach to boosting programmer productivity, his career at Microsoft organizing legions of software developers and teaching them how to structure their code, or his planned voyage into Earth orbit this spring, moving beyond established ways of doing things has always been Simonyi's method. Now he is plotting what he hopes will be his most vaulting meta-move of all. Simonyi believes he can solve a host of stubborn problems that have always plagued computers by offering everyone who uses them, and the coders who program them, a higher-order view of software. Bill Gates calls Simonyi "one of the great programmers of all time." Indeed, Simonyi is arguably the most successful coder in the world, measured in terms of financial reward and the number of people who use his creations. (Other celebrated programmer-billionaires, such as Larry Ellison and Bill Gates himself, made their money and names founding and managing technology ventures.) Simonyi could easily choose to spend the rest of his life endowing philanthropic ventures, flying planes, or cruising in his yacht. Instead, he says, he is "programming probably harder than ever before." He is obsessed with a project that he has pursued for a decade and a half, and that four years ago carried him right out of Microsoft's doors. He is proud of his profession. But he is also haunted by the thought of what programmers must contend with each time they sit down to code. He asks, Why is it so hard to create good software? |
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IBM's Symphony for the Office Worker
09/28/2007
Comments
rajuch on 02/07/2007 at 11:38 AM
1
How does it solve the software updates problem? What would happen, if they need to change some features six month from the installation? Can we put the bench back in the machine to refine the bench, or do we need to start over and pay for full new bench? Many online applications are being updated every other month.
If one needs to build a computer table or wooden cabinet, can he use that bench-making machine? Or does he need to build a new machine for each kind of products? I am not joking. You would agree, if you read the following.
We already invented such machines for building online-GUI-applications. Greatly appreciate your feedback, what you think about our online GUI application making machine. Please review brief overview to our application machine:
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/software-irony.htm
Each ‘Component Factory’ in the left side of the Figure#1 acts as a knob, to refine each part (i.e. a loosely coupled component/AC) in the application (shown right side). Please review the following WebPages, which show that this process builds perfect ‘application machine’ with simple to operate knobs to refine each part. Please review summary at the end to understand why it cost only a fraction to refine the application:
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/Minimum-couplings.htm
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/super-distribution.htm
P.S: Of course, one must use our highly-flexible online-GUI-API to build the online GUI components. You may see interactive GUI Components, which are built using SVG. We will be building the GUI Classes for XAML/Vista in the future.
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/Demo-SVGS/misc-charts.html
More sample links at: http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/demo-links.htm
One may build his own custom GUI Classes, for example, to build multi-player online games or near real-time modeling of Air-traffic, as explained at:
http://cbsdf.com/Newbies/Flight-main.htm
http://cbsdf.com/misc_docs/online-apps-rock.htm
Best Regards,
Raju
sriramv.iyer on 02/13/2007 at 4:59 AM
1
But this article did rekindle my interest in DSLs. (I use python and not lisp, though)
rubs74 on 02/22/2007 at 5:27 PM
1
Model Driven Architecture also adds a new level of abstracction to software development and I guess that takes the base idea of Intentional Programming as well. There are already tools that work on production. Here there's a tool based on MDA that really allows you to think more about the bussiness logic and less about the complexities of building it, just take a look http://www.care-t.com/
JEfromCanada on 03/09/2007 at 3:10 PM
1
bushka on 03/14/2007 at 5:55 PM
1
oscarbhaskar on 06/13/2007 at 10:11 AM
1
The question now is how do we implement the concept? How do we capture the "Intention"?
I think we are about to see a new dimension in the way software is developed.
enterprise on 06/30/2007 at 2:45 PM
1
By Christmas.
We will make sure the writers of this excellent article know in good time.
In the meantime, if you want to be involved with the fun, get in touch on gedymail@gmail.com
GD
Corbier on 12/25/2007 at 2:02 PM
4
For a quick glance at what a language definition file might look like, check out:
www.ucalc.com/lisp.txt (Lisp)
www.ucalc.com/forth.txt (Forth)
The download includes more files like this, which you can load up into the generic interpreter, at which point it becomes an interpreter for the language you just loaded. (The supplied interpreter demonstrates just one possible kind of interface. You can create your own fancy interface to interpret such code).
uCalc LB is no longer in the idea stage. An actual fully working beta implementation can be downloaded.
I am the author of uCalc Language Builder (as well as uCalc Fast Math Parser), and I am looking for early adopters of the uCalc LB technology. An interactive tutorial that comes with the download can walk you trough the various concepts. Other forms of documentation are also included, as well as an interactive interpreter.
--
Daniel Corbier
www.ucalc.com