About Android and G15 PMN

[This is written in 2018 and concerns
what we are working on, as one of very
many projects at the same time.]

For a long while, indeed from the very
beginning of the design of the G15 
machine code, the G15 assembly, and 
the G15 PMN programming language, we 
have considered that the ideal 
environment is first-hand electronics.
And this is absolutely correct.

Meanwhile, to make G15 PMN useful as
a programming language, we have also
made it a design aim that all the most
common platforms on the most commonly
commercially available computers shall
run G15 PMN, on the premise that they
allow at least some first-handedness,
including having a big monitor and a
real keyboard and a mouse.

Throughout, we have regarded several
types of development in the commercial
computing industry as opposite to 
first-handedness, and proudly avoided
these. We have also avoided any 
catering to the over-hyped phenomenon
of class/hierarchy/object-oriented 
programming, such as found with Java, as
anything we want to put G15 PMN into, in
some virtual form.

However commercial things, and widely
available platforms, though the labels 
may be much or fully the same, may slowly
open up doors for more first-handed
approaches in sometimes unlikely ways.
On one of my many PCs, I have an 
inexpensive Asus laptop. It boots fast
with the newest version of Neon Linux,
which runs G15 PMN whether in its Wayland
mode, or, by a separate G15 PMN package,
in its X org mode. During startup I can
also, thanks to the open source project
that has been of such great importance to
so many programmers over several years now--
the android-x86--start the same laptop,
with the same big screen, and a separate
USB mouse, and its same normal keyboard,
with an Android (the name 'android' is and
remains completely at odds with all 
meaningful philosophy as I see it, but
that have to be as it is) platform. This
Android, which is technically discussed at
such places as Google Groups, is of the
newest version. Through immense work by
a number of people, the platform really
works. It allows for instance C programs 
to be compiled in a terminal and the Neon 
Linux can compile big Java programs for it. It has
a Firefox by Mozilla that allows fetching
images that can be uploaded into apps only
on a few platforms. It has a Chrome by
Google, of course, Google being the 
shapers and maintainers of the Android 
approach, and this Chrome supplements
Google Play, as does the terminal, for
the installation of Java packages. 

Given the present state of affairs, then,
the Android platform is a sort of Java
oriented branch of Linux that do have an
openness for first-handed programming and
first-handed creative intelligent work,
given proper programs. As yet, there are
very few programs that have anything of
the maturity typically found with main
packages for Ubuntu. But it is possible to
entertain the notion that this is, after
all, a worthy candidate indeed for serious
work, and not just something over-controlled,
suitable for rediculously second-hand and
over-commercialised devices. 

G15 PMN is immensely stimulating for those
who have, shall we say, an artistic or
philosophical or even spiritual touch to
their approach to computing, and who have
set aside time and resources to get it 
running well on a computer and to learn it.
In 2020, that is to say, in about two
years from now, we will have had enough
time for a porting of G15 PMN also to
such mature Android solutions as the one
mentioned above, so that first-hand work
with G15 PMN can take place also there.

Once the first forms of G15 PMN works
for such a solution, we will provide
some more forms of it to accomodate some
of the smaller and some of the keyboard-
less devices also, since it is so easy
once we have the complete full version to
work; and we expect the G15 PMN to work,
eventually, flawlessly between the platforms
as we have it already today with Linux 64-bit,
Linux 32-bit, early Linux 32-bit, Windows,
and DOS. We have not taken any decision
concerning Apple--we'll have to wait and
see whether some of Apple's platforms become
more open source than today. Given that
Google have a professional, and open
source friendly enough, approach to Android,
they will have made a contribution to the
world of computing and computing science
in that way.

As for the long-term perspectives, we 
affirm the validity of the warp-friendly
programming approach of G15 PMN and the
importance of G15 PMN oriented hardware of
a first-hand kind, as before. But we are
always glad to see more combinations 
possible.

By the creator of G15 PMN,
June 23/24, 2018, Aristo Tacoma (alias SRW)