Future-Proofness of TiddlyWiki: how do I counter somebody who disagrees?

#1

I’m of the mindset that a TiddlyWiki instance today is something that should still work just fine 10 years down the road.

I have two individuals who say, paraphrasing, that TiddlyWiki is the opposite of future proof, and I think they are out to lunch.

What would be an intelligent counter to they naysayers?

My post in a BASIC forum:

Just a thought for which I have to figure out the right wording and how to fit that in as one of the features/qualities/characteristics of BASIC Anywhere Machine.

Because it runs in a web browser and it is a fully self-contained single file (i.e. IDE, interpreter, programs, everything):

Your personal copy of BASIC Anywhere Machine and everything you put in it, it will probably all work fine as-is on any web browser in 10-20 years from now.

All of the BASIC programs are all there, in one file.

You don’t have to go find the install files like you would for a traditional BASIC implementation and hope that it installs and runs on the latest operating system.

So BASIC Anywhere Machine inherits this quality from TiddlyWiki: Future Proof.

A copy of BASIC Anywhere Machine has zero dependencies on anything other than a web browser. Forever. (Comparatively speaking? In practicality?)

Reply #1:

That sounds very nice, except browser engines are now enormously complex. They require powerful computers with modern operating systems to work at all. Already we’re down to only two of them, and it’s unlikely that another will come along at this point to revive the competition. It’s not 2004 anymore. So anything that depends on a web browser, like Twine (another child of TiddlyWiki that holds a big chunk of the world’s culture), could easily go the way of Flash. And accessibility is a serious issue.

BAM is cool, and can be very useful as a showcase of Basic, but it’s the very opposite of future-proof, unfortunately. And we don’t have good solutions.

Reply #2:

eh yes it is self-containd BUT require browser
would be nice to have mimimal browser with self-contained BAM
then that would be totally portable .
On windows there are few portable browsers …but then that is not OS
agnostic…right ?

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#2

1 – longevity already

2 – TW is standards compliant and as such can’t fail unless the internet fails.

Is that enough for your naysayers?

TT

#3

I’ll throw those in my slap-fight with these guys, but their arguments or so goofy that it is like talking past each other.

It’s kind of weird, because I’ve got some fans of BASIC who totally seem to get the value of BASIC hosted in TiddlyWiki, but then a whole bunch of folk who seem against it (in a “trying to undermine it” way) which seems kind of strange to me.

If they were bringing up concerns that I could address, or problems that I could fix, that would be great.

But to say that it, it being a TiddlyWiki instance, is the opposite of future proof throws me for a major loop.

#4

Okay, here’s how I replied to the naysayers, and I hope this does TiddlyWiki a little bit of justice:

Oh Lucy, do we ever need to agree to disagree.

How we view web browsers is a wild divergence.

1 – longevity is baked in

2 – TW is standards compliant and as such can’t fail unless the internet fails.

Case in point:

The current incarnation of TiddlyWiki (TW 5) was preceded by something now called TiddlyWiki Classic.

TiddlyWiki instances from 17 years ago still work today because they are all internet standard compliant.

TiddlyWiki isn’t a technology that was created like Flash.

TiddlyWiki is a product built on HTML, CSS, and javascript, all standards compliant and all future-proof.

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#5

One observation is that much of my work as a programmer in the 1980s is now preserved via the very active retro-computing emulation community. For example, here’s a game that I wrote in 1983 running in an emulator:

I think it’s reasonable to expect the same trend in the future, with people in 100 years happily running Chrome 234 in an emulator…

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#6

I have a version of Bob running in electron that is a completely self-contained version, so there is that.

Electron isn’t exactly a lightweight thing itself, but there are ways to keeping tiddlywiki going even if there is some browser apocolypse 2.0 that means we can’t run in a normal browser at all.

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#7

TBH, I think much of the stuff you done both way back and now deserves attention.

Maybe, soon, you might get a decent biographer?

TBH I think your computer mind was and is very on-the-ball.

TT

#8

@jeremyruston I adore your confidence as a teenager (1983). Very good sign …

TT

#9

I’m thinking it would be cool if that emulator could exist in a TiddlyWiki instance, for use offline.

Unless I’m over-estimating the usefulness of TiddlyWiki for that kind of thing? Is there already something out there that allows that emulator to run on any device offline ?

Don’t mind me: that’s been a big thing at the forefront of my TiddlyWiki use case thinking lately, TiddlyWiki as a (sort of) virtual machine.

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#10

:clown_face:

At best, that’s a loosely tethered set of negatives (some poorly articulated) that have nothing to do with TW or future-proof-ability. He’s trying to build toward a QED but since (s)he doesn’t have one, closes with an opinion about something entirely unrelated.

Charlie, move on. You can’t win against such poor, blinkered, uninformed opinion.

Reply #2? <crickets>

Aside: How old is TiddlyWikiClassic? 19? It’s certainly “not 2004 anymore” but TW was working in 2004…

AND STILL IS.

#11

Absolutely. Browsers are headed that way (if they’re not there already).

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#12

There is no such thing as a virtual “leg before wicket” (LBW) …

#13

Oh boy, are you ever right.

My “flame baiting” and “trolling” radar aren’t all that great. (If that’s what is going on over there.)

Easy for me to get suckered-in when my pet project is getting critiqued on points that get me cognitively glitching because the points seem nonsensical to me. Paralysis by analysis over here, big time.

#14

What is TWINE? What does “Already we’re down to only two of them” refer to?

“On windows there are few portable browsers” ?? Isn’t one enough? How many do you need?

No technology ever goes away, according to the author of “What Technology Wants.”

However, it does become less relevant. I imagine in a hundred years all programming will be done by computers, taking general instructions from humans and converting them into actions. Oh, and they probably won’t be called “computers” anymore. Just as there are people who still nap stone into knives, there will be some people who still do hand-programming. But it will be very niche. I would guess there will be more people in a hundred years that knit their own clothes than people who write their own code.

Basic is on the wane. Javascript, the basis of TiddlyWiki, is used in servers (node.js) and in web pages. It is used by Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Instagram, Yahoo, Khan Academy … and many, many more. Thinking a hundred years into the future is futile, but 20 years on JS will be still highly supported.

#15

Keeping in mind that I look upon things with Windows 2-tier software development glasses …

What I’m thinking (i.e. virtual machine) is nothing revolutionary at all, but it gets my wheels spinning furiously and my geek mojo going. I might just be overly excited because of my glasses.

Kind of silly maybe, but it is nice to read a simple “absolutely” confirmation about this obvious (to the point of not worth mentioning?) characteristic of web browsers.

#16

Show them classic.tiddlywiki.com and tell them that the software development started in 2004 and still works as intended. Users still use it. It’s the same author and TW5 is developed with the same philosophy in mind.

That’s TW first version: TiddlyWiki …
TW 2nd version: TiddlyWiki

Especially 1st and 2nd version are the proof, that apps like this still work 20 years after they have been developed.

I think there isn’t much more to say. If they don’t get the clue, with those real world proofs you can’t convince them anyway.

#17

Right. Good comment to refer back 18 years. What else works now after that time?

#18

That was an enjoyable read. Thanks for taking the time !

The only thing I would say about BASIC, is that for whatever years I’ve got left in me, it is the way for me to add things to TiddlyWiki in a language I enjoy. I find the combo makes for very fun solution development.

Last 5 years trying, I cannot stand javascript at all. I appreciate the good stuff built, and am grateful that there are folk skilled in it. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to ever do anything with javascript other than very small things I need and can’t do otherwise.

And whatever I build in BASIC in TiddlyWiki, because it is being interpreted by javascript, will still work in 20 years because JS will be still highly supported. Which makes me happy. Whatever I do should last even beyond my lifetime.

The BASIC guys raining on my parade because they don’t like TiddlyWiki, and the TiddlyWiki guys raining on my parade because they don’t like BASIC, both are equally baffling to me. I do not get at all the need to poo-poo what I’m doing or poo-poo the value that I see in it and share for those interested.

Kind of like I have folk in two totally different camps have a need to dissuade my sharing. Feels weird. I would have thought that if one is not interested in what I’m doing, why not just ignore me?

I share this joy for the TiddlyWiki-BASIC combo in case there are any other oddballs like me who do find joy in it too.

#19

I’m instantly reminded of something I heard once:

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

Been a while since I’ve thought of that quote. One of my favourites.

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#20

I think the best advice here has been ‘take a deep breath and move on’.

Keep up the excellent TWBASIC! I’m enjoying seeing what you produce!

TWINE is a web based tool for making interactive stories.

https://twinery.org/2/#!/welcome

The creator of TWINE was active in the TW Google group many many years ago, it may be a fork or something else entirely!

https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/q738q4splqs/m/Ltfzg4BRIw4J