I disagree that history proves them wrong about Telescript. They just had the client/server relationship backwards (and asymmetrical).

Andy Hertzfeld: "You didn't really need to do that. Just the remote procedure paradigm was good enough. Which is really what the web is based on. You don't inject code into the web to do you work for you and come back to you. You just ask a server with an http request."

It doesn't take Yakov Smirnoff to observe that now the web injects code into you.

The remote procedure paradigm isn't good enough. That just leads to the X-Windows Disaster.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows-disaster-128d39...

I'll argue that injecting code both ways is quite useful and extremely powerful.

Whenever you add a script or extension to Google Sheets or Google Docs or Gmail, you're injecting JavaScript code into a server running in the cloud.

Here's another example of how clients can inject code into servers: NFS 3.0 aka NeFS was a proposed version of NFS that put a PostScript interpreter into the kernel, so you could download code into your file server to efficiently perform file system operations, minimizing network traffic and even eliminating context switching.

http://donhopkins.com/home/nfs3_0.pdf

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9271578

>You might get a kick out of Sun's proposal for "NFS 3.0" aka "NeFS". The basic idea was to put a PostScript interpreter in the kernel for extensibly and efficiently executing distributed and even local file system operations. It not only cuts down on network transactions for the same reason NeWS and AJAX does, but even locally you can avoid billions of context switches by executing "find" and tasks like that in the kernel, for example.

NeFS was a great idea, but too radical for its time (Feb. 1990, soon before Telescript), but people are finally starting to rediscover the technique with other languages like JavaScript and Java.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7958194

>Runtime.JS – Operating system kernel built on V8 (runtimejs.org)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17060395

>pjmlp 55 days ago | on: Extending Tcl

>Yes, Sun played with idea of putting a JVM on the Solaris kernel.

>DonHopkins 55 days ago

>Even 16 or so years earlier in 1990, Sun played with the idea of putting a PostScript interpreter in the SunOS kernel.

>Like NeWS was the Network extensible Window System, so NeFS was the Network extensible File System, or NFS 3.0.

>It was actually a great idea, just a wee bit before its time, and very poorly named and positioned!

>This comparison of NeWS to AJAX also applies NeFS, which is like kernel NeWS with file operations instead of a graphics library -- it also saves you lots of user/kernel context switches even if you're not doing any networking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS

>NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS coherently:

>- used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming.

>- used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML and CSS for rendering.

>- used PostScript data instead of XML and JSON for data representation.

>It didn't go over very well because the unenlightened philistines of the time couldn't get their head around an API to the file system that wasn't compatible with creat open close read write and ioctl.