The future is specific

Written by Eric Normand. Published: May 23, 2012.

Chris Granger:

the real potential is in making it trivial to build domain specific tools

Chris is definitely onto something valuable. Eclipse has had plugins for a long time, but they were always expensive to write. Emacs has been programmable forever. But it looks like Chris is making it even easier still and in a more modern package.

Imagine being able to create these sorts of experiences on a whim instead of needing hundreds of hours to even get something simple working. If you couple that with the generalized editing capabilities I showed last time, you have what we believe to be the future of tools: an environment that you are able to mold to the exact shape of your problem.

Without diminishing the great work Chris is doing, I have one question: has this not been the promise of personal computing since its conception at Xerox PARC?

Thank you, Chris, for bringing these ideas back into the realm of possibility.