welcome to the cloud

SICP, 1986:
- recursive tree walks
- AI
- lisp
- prolog
- magic

2013:
- overengineered nonsense like visual studio and java
- hipstr.js, a new "framework" that uses 120% of your CPU to do nothing useful
- "cloud" computing, a return to 1960's remote-access services in lieu of personal computing, for the greater profit of software giants
- fisherprice "apps" the design of which assumes computer users are 3 years old

Today Apple with their "user-friendly" unprogrammable devices are king, enslaving people into believing that a "computer" is a gadget for wasting time on websites and not a means of computing things

If you don't buy new "devices" every year and contribute your share to world pollution, you're not cool. Even though we now have many gigahertz of CPU and many gigabytes of RAM, upgrades are considered proper etiquette.

When software lets you connect with customers when and where they want, that's business with .NET.

When objects fall back to the ground after they are thrown, that's business with gravity.

As they said in the olden days before this website was run over by spammers and racists, DISCUSS.



Internet Cloud is a cluster of computers which
1.provides redundancy and scalability for the user
2.allowing storing and modifying data
3.allowing remotely uploading and controlling programs on the cluster
4.provides an interface that makes the cluster an application



The thing about the past is that you're only looking at the examples that have survived in some form.  It's a process that excludes the shit, and there was a ton of shit.  I remember seeing an mid-80's ad for a program that kept your shopping list on your computer.  Price: $80.  There's still crap like that floating around, but now it costs what it's worth: nothing.

As for cloud, well, people are rightly leery of it.  But the corruption of these companies are the same forces that brought us Linux and FreeBSD in the first place, and the worse these assholes get the more free (in both senses) options there will be.  The only real danger is that they worm their way into legislating away free software, which is a genuine threat in my opinion.

I think another danger is that one of these proprietary companies might come up with a programming tool that is in some way genuinely superior to the free alternatives, and is difficult to duplicate.  That would prevent neckbeards like us from climbing the economic ladder should we wish to.

But if you really believe lisp to be superior to .NET or Java, use it.  Write something usable in it and share it.  That is how you will prove your correctness.  Writing will never do that.