RE: Chuck's SVFIG talk

["Lloyd R. Prentice" <pai@xxxxxxxx>]

Many thanks to Jeff for transcribing Chuck's SVFIG talk.

Chuck is always provocative and evocative. Really liked the idea that
we  "replicate
their (MS) software in 1/10 of 1% of the code.... in a year or two."
Wish I was smart enough to contribute to the effort.

At the very least, it would be very productive for the MISC cause, I
think, to have fully documented cannonical examples of the core software
applications that everyone uses. For example, I would love to see the
source and play with the iTV web browser. One can find such examples in
the early Forth literature, but user needs and expectations have
advanced considerably since then. This body of work, were it widely
available, would go a long way toward addressing the question of whether
MISC is merely the highly personal and idiosyncratic vision of a few
extraorinarily bright people, or is  truly applicable to broad
mainstream markets. At the very least, it would give us all set of
compatible tools to play with; start building with. As an exercise in
character building, just what would such a set of tools look like?

The question of MISC's broader applicability has been much on my mind.
I've been fantacising a "MISC Manifesto" that would help address it.
Here's a "strawman" draft that may be totally off the mark. I welcome
others to put it straight.

The MISC Manifesto

1. Complexity is the enemy of performance, reliability, creativity and
personal satisfaction.

2. Conventional computing technology is crippled by over elaboration and
unbridled complexity.

3. In analysis we strive for the simplest possible solution.

4. In hardware we strive for ever smaller dies, simpler systems.

5. In software we strive for the minimal set of simple, tight logical
building blocks that we can easily rearrange in simple patterns to solve
every programming problem at hand.

6. Less is inevitably Moore.

Best wishes,

Lloyd R. Prentice