From ...
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Subject: Re: Is LISP dying?
Date: 1999/07/21
Message-ID: <3141525678820147@naggum.no>#1/1
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp

* 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