Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bcstec!ray
From: ray@bcstec.boeing.com (Ray Allis)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Grumpy about Dopey Window Systems
Keywords: LOOPS windows
Message-ID: <654@bcstec.boeing.com>
Date: 7 Feb 91 21:54:34 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services, Seattle
Lines: 45


Barry Schein says...

>I realize everyone is going to jump up and down and say ooh ooh you
>can do *exactly* that with (fill in favorite interface builder.)
>
>All I can say is, probably not, you'd have to use it to understand.

That certainly has been my experience.  I have not been able to describe 
what made LOOPS so exceptional without an actual living system at hand.

I got to play with Smalltalk-80 when PARC first let it out; on a Xerox
1100 (the Dolphin, successor to the Alto).  The Smalltalk Language book 
was still in galley proof.  It was a mind trip for me and for my managers.
Rapid prototyping was the buzzword, but it was the graphic interface that
made the impressions.  But "Real Work" was done in LISP.

LOOPS was "beta test software" almost grudgingly made available to us.  I
used the system for about two years on my 1108/1109/1186's.  It is far
and away the best programming environment I've seen.  But Xerox gave the
impression of reluctance to admit it existed, and it didn't spread far.

LOOPS was more than object-oriented; it was a multi-paradigm system with
objects, rules, LISP and "active variables", all available at an interactive
graphic interface.  As Barry noted, the browser was a graph of the object
inheritance tree.  The nodes were (usually) classes, and clicking the mouse
on them allowed inspection and editing of class and instance variables, etc.
Of course you could manipulate almost anything about a running program and
see the effect immediately.

I think it was the interface that made the system so remarkable.  These
days "Scientific Visualization" is a hot topic, because it's productive
to help a person *see* data as shape and color.  There is good potential
for new insights.  The LOOPS interface allowed you to *visualize* the
structure and dynamics of the program or system you were building/studying,
in pretty much the same way.  The current "window managers" don`t have the
same goal, and certainly nothing like the same results.

>          ... but I think it illustrates what object-oriented
>programming was originally conceived to be.  It became something rather
>boring.

Too true.

Maybe it's time for "Computer Program Visualization"?