A Morphtron is a simple “information cell” that can be combined to create powerful software solutions. Morphtrons provide a unifying foundation for an information engineering system which benefits all computer users. By specifying a consistent yet language-neutral means of representing all information in a computer system including programming instructions, Morphtrons are suitable for simulating a broad range of objects including people, places, things, events, processes, ideas, documents and data familiar to humans. Don’t get confused by this breadth - just find what works for you and use it.
While the standards spawned by the Internet boom have helped software developers make large volumes of information accessible to those without programming skills, the crisis in software development continues. Since computers cannot process human metaphors and languages, most computers users are unable to directly instruct computers. The overwhelming majority of people remain dependent on a relatively few highly skilled programmers and analysts to divine their needs, translate them into metaphors and languages understood by computers and implement solutions. Due to the lack of software engineering standards, even when the end results are satisfactory, solutions tend to be islands unto themselves unable to work well with other solutions. By combining object-oriented programming techniques and XML, web services have made data exchange and remote procedure calls more approachable at a surface level. Riding the wave of Web 2.0, object-oriented dynamic languages have lowered the barrier to entry, but each programming language remains an island. unto itself with similar but incompatible or confusing differences in the definition and manipulation of objects. Even applications written with the same language don’t work together well so getting software to interoperate requires a very high skill level. When telephone usage was limited by the number of operators, the answer was not to be found in training more operators, but rather enabling individuals to set up their own connections. The automated telephone exchange with touch-tone handsets transformed the telephone system.
As their name implies, Morphtron objects can easily change into a variety of forms. This along with the internal structural design and object creation protocol of Morphtrons makes it possible to assemble arbitrarily complex, yet interoperable solutions from fine-grained software components. Using Morphtrons, advanced computer scientists, professional software developers and automated programs can process, fine-tune and enhance solutions created by non-programmers. In the past efficiency was a driving cost factor in computer programming. However, given the performance and memory capacity of today’s PC’s, efficiency is less of a concern so greater emphasis can be placed on getting computers to work in a manner that non-programming humans are comfortable with. Just as the automatic transmission made automobiles accessible, for people without programming backgrounds, Morphtron based tools will make it possible for people without technical backgrounds to instruct computers to carry out complex tasks. These tools are based on a story driven simulation metaphor not unlike that seen in many video games. Today’s desktop metaphor has a natural place in this paradigm called GriotVision or GV so it is backward compatible. Since Morphtrons are a general purpose programming construct, solutions may be constructed without any explicit tie to the GV model. Within GV, “programs” or software solutions are movie-script like sets of instructions in which named actors are given actions to carry out.
Morphtron architecture was designed to be as language-agnostic as possible. In 2006, this means that Morphtrons may be fully implemented in a wide variety of dynamic languages. Currently Smalltalk and Javascript implementations exist and Ruby is in process. I’m seeking implementors for PHP 5, Perl 6 and Python versions. Useful partial implementations should be possible in most object-oriented languages including C#, Java.
[…] began implementing my Morphtron Programming Framework in Ruby(hopefully I’ll get some of that code up here this week) but was very frustrated by […]
[…] in this saga I’ll explore the evolutionary river Javascript is sailing down in the context of Morphtron and the stack of capabilities it supports. In the meantime, given that prototypes are inherently […]