Talk:JOSS

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Just so you know: 'JOSS In' is JOSS version I, sub-version n.

[edit] disambig

I've removed this diambiguation notice from JOSS:

This article is on the programming language. See also religion in China and incense, Joss Stone for the British female soul singer, or Joss Whedon for the television writer/producer

I can't see the connection with religion in China and incense (neither use the word Joss), and I don't believe the personalities were known only by their first name.

Pengo 23:23, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A Few Comments on Joss -- by Alan Kay

A suggestion for this article would be to not use any modern conventions, but to follow Cliff Shaw's original Joss typography and UI as closely as possible. For example, Joss was done on a very nice converted IBM typewriter (made by Tom Ellis and others at RAND), typed on fan-fold 8.5x11 paper that was drilled for one's looseleaf notebook, and the user's input was typed in green, with its replies typed in black and indented.

Another suggestion is to actually execute the Joss programs. It is annoying to have something nice like the Wikipedia, have a reasonable article about an early interactive language (like the ones on Joss and Logo) and not be able to try out examples even though we are reading the articles on a running computer that could execute them. JavaScript is more than capable for such examples, and I and a few friends decided to do a browser-only Logo embedded in a wiki to demonstrate how this could and should be. Go to LogoWiki [1] to try this. As of April 21st 2006 it is only a week old, but it should be pretty stable by the end of May.

Let's hope that the community will gradually make interpreters for the great programming languages and environments of the past!