This is Alan Kay and other computer scientists having a bit of an academic wank. It says up at the top that this work is not intended to replace conventional operating systems and applications, but to speculate.<p>Old-school coders lament that the last completely understandable computer was some model by Commodore -- the C64 or Amiga, depending on whom you ask. Computers <i>used</i> to ship with complete schematic diagrams and enough documentation that you could know what every byte of system code did and where every I&#x2F;O register was and what they did. These days, not so much -- before the massive, proprietary OS kernel even gets loaded there are many hardware and firmware interfaces to be navigated, many of them protected by patent IP laws and only available under NDA, if at all.<p>The intent of the STEPS paper is to explore possible answers to the question &quot;how powerful a system can we build with modern tech, that is still completely comprehensible by a single person?&quot;