cmacleod4

The target market is "power users" who want maximum functionality and don't care much about prettiness.

I used to work on some of the code behind those "clunky" screens. I would say that Bloomberg UIs generally do quite a good job of making the functionality scale - you can do basic stuff quickly with sensible defaults, but when you need more sophistication the UI lets you dig deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

The Bloomberg Terminal started as dedicated hardware, but it has been Windows-based software for at least 20 years. At one time a Solaris-based version was developed, but that never took off and was dropped. These days there are plenty of Linux servers running back-end code in the Bloomberg data centres, but I've not heard of any plan to support Linux on the front-end.

"The internet today still does not have a good discussion medium like Usenet, and I am not sure if it ever will." Several web interfaces to Usenet exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . I operate one of these at https://newsgrouper.org/ .

Many Usenet groups have been abandoned, or are haunted only by a few cranks, but a few still have worthwhile discussion. A couple of years ago there was a tidal wave of spam, but that mostly stopped after Google Groups disconnected. So the infrastructure is still there, still free of adverts and manipulative algorithms, just waiting for more people to use it.

The list of talks for this year's Tcl and OpenACS conference has just been published: https://openacs.km.at/ . It's all happening in Vienna, Austria, on 16 & 17 July. Registration officially closes tomorrow, but late applications are quite likely to be accepted.

As another post pointed out, AI as a field of research started about the time I was born (LLMs are another matter of course). So everything I've created has been since that time. Some of my software tools are listed at https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Colin+Macleod - no form of AI was involved in any of them.

"worst case is trying to develop some small utility like a tool to search in files using regex" - you mean something like: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/ReacTcl+example%3A+Grv ?

This will run on Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Tcl's starkit/starpack system makes it easy to generate a single executable file for each OS that can just be copied over and run without any installation needed.

"there are no native GUI frameworks for simple tools that are easy, fast, and simple to develop in at the same time" - Tcl/Tk does all that just fine for me.

As I said, the user interface is awkward. You need to select the "Content" checkbox when searching for Posts. E.g. to search for "deadlock" within comp.lang.tcl, start with https://usenetarchives.com/index.php?s=deadlock%20ingroup:co... then select "Content", unselect "Author" and "Subject" and click "Search".

In the early days Usenet propagation was slow and haphazard because the communication links available were very limited. Nowadays I can post a message on one Usenet server and it appears on other servers in a few seconds. So coherent real-time conversations are no problem.

On the other hand, with a long-running discussion, HN, Reddit, etc. still have no way to see what messages are new since you last looked at a thread, something which Usenet clients have always done and still do now.

Spam fell off drastically after Google Groups disconnected from Usenet a couple of years ago.

I had tried this site a year or two ago and found it unusable then, but it seems greatly improved now. I found posts as old as 1982, but recent coverage seems to stop around April 2022. Crucially, it supports full-text search on posts within a specific group - something which my own site https://newsgrouper.org cannot do. I find the user interface a little awkward, but it does now appear to be a really useful resource.

Nice presentation, looks like the same thing I implemented in Tcl here: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/ReacTcl :-)

I have a Tcl Improvement Proposal (TIP 676) currently being voted on which introduces an alternative compact form of calculation. The implementation uses a Pratt parser: https://core.tcl-lang.org/tcl/file?ci=cgm-equals-command&nam... which directly generates bytecode rather than creating a parse tree.

You might be interested in https://newsgrouper.org - my web interface to Usenet, text-only. The site is implemented in Tcl, but only needs a web browser for a client. Some Android users find it preferable to the available native clients.

Your question was probably misinterpreted as sarcasm. :-(

Here's mine: https://cmacleod.me.uk/ - I'm a retired programmer, my site has links to various projects, mostly in Tcl, some Javascript or C, also old blog, etc.

Note: when posting a link to an article on Newsgrouper it's best to use the "Permalink" at the bottom of the article. People clicking that will get straight to the article without needing to login as a guest. The permalink for this article is: https://newsgrouper.org/%3C10jcmri$l9u0$1@paganini.bofh.team...

As with most Python problems, the solution is to switch to Tcl - https://www.tcl-lang.org/man/tcl9.0/TclCmd/interp.html#M44 :-)

Very interesting!

Note that the name might be confused with an old project: https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Feather .

In Tcl you can redefine "if", or even delete it entirely if you're crazy enough :-)

The one thing that really annoys me about HN is that when you return to a discussion that you read the day before, there is no way to easily find the comments which are new since your previous visit. This is basic functionality which Usenet always had (and still does).

What "acquisition"? Nobody owns Usenet, it's a cooperative effort between many different server operators which continues to this day.

"pause the program and run commands in the paused program" - that's often possible in Tcl too. There are various ways to interact with a running program, query or modify variables, run commands, load updated code, etc.

Reader mode in Firefox worked for me :-)

Here's my geoblock message for https://newsgrouper.org -

Blocked due to UK Online Safety Act

You appear to be connecting from an IP address in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately this site is no longer available to UK users. This is due to the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which are not practical for this site to comply with. If you feel this is unjustified, I can only suggest that you write to your Member of Parliament. This site remains in operation for non-UK users, as they are outside the scope of the Act.

For more information see Ofcom's official site, and an unofficial guide.

Other web interfaces to Usenet are available, and may continue to allow UK users, see Wikipedia.

Web UIs exist with a variety of interface styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . The now-defunct novaBBS was probably the closest to phpBB in style, but the new go-pugleaf is aiming in a similar direction.

There's a lot less spam since Google Groups disconnected last year. Good text-based providers like https://www.eternal-september.org/ also filter out spam and don't carry the binary groups where porn and piracy is found.

Actually there are a few web interfaces to Usenet that make it easy to jump in, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit...

I operate one of these myself at https://newsgrouper.org .

I'm retired now so I don't care what the market thinks. For applications I expect to be run locally by myself and/or a few other geeks, I use good old Tcl/Tk. For things where I'm aiming for a wider distribution I use plain html & javascript (no frameworks).

This took place on 10-11 July in Bologna, Italy. The schedule page has now been updated with links to the presentation slides and videos.