Plan 9 from User Space
After a brief diversion with the Acme editor (a big part of Plan 9) and some modern Smalltalk environments (Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo), I can&#x27;t help but feel like we are stuck in a very local optimum as far as UI&#x2F;UX go.<p>The insane amount of introspection available to you in a Smalltalk image, and the way every bit of text becomes a potential button or action in Acme just put the lack of creativity in modern interfaces. I say all this as a Haskell and Nix fan as well, so I&#x27;m very in-tune to the benefits of functional purity and reproducibility in a computing system. It really makes the silo-ed world of isolated microservices, containers, and walled &quot;garden&quot; ecosystems seem really sad.<p>I guess this is my way of saying, that we should all try to do things differently. Haskellers, go learn Smalltalk. It&#x27;s not a big deal that things mutate things when you can literally inspect every object as its running, including the debugger :D. Smalltalkers (or Rubyists or whatever is closest) go learn Haskell. Sometimes boundaries are GOOD. Formality can be very helpful when it comes to organizing, designing, and reasoning about your stuff!<p>And we should all try to do something weird.