Sixth - system for data storage, computation, exploration and interaction

• This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
• Program author:
  • Svjatoslav Agejenko
  • Homepage: http://svjatoslav.eu
  • Email: mailto://svjatoslav@svjatoslav.eu
• Other software projects hosted at svjatoslav.eu

Idea is to design all encompassing, flexible and powerful virtual environment where I can live in and very efficiently do all my computing tasks enjoyably and with playful ease.

Examples of extendable environments where one can live in and do almost everything:

GNU Emacs

At the heart, Emacs is text editor on top of Lisp runtime.

Eclipse IDE

In essence OSGi platform with a text editor.

In both cases you can develop/install plugins for every purpose imaginable.

I would like to create general purpose environment with the following properties:

• Makes lots of complex data intuitive to:
  • explore, understand
  • manipulate and compute on
• Extensively relying on:
  • Realtime 3D graphics with immediate feedback loop.

  “Virtual reality holds the key to the evolution of the human mind” Dr. Lawrence Angelo, The Lawnmower Man (1992)

• Flexible and distributed computation and data storage.
• Cross device:
  • Easily switch and/or combine computers to work seamlessly on any tasks.
  • User interface, data, software, running proceses etc are not contained to any device.

• Formulated high-level vision / goal.
• In the process of implementing some of building blocks:
  • Data storage engine.
  • In software, pure Java realtime 3D rendering engine.
    • 3D engine demos
• System is nowhere near complete (given magnitude of effort required and my free time available). Contributions welcome ! :)

• Program - stored instructions for execution by computer.
• Process - Currently running program.
  • Process is self contained. Has a full copy of program code and every dependent library.
    • Memory used by processes is content addressed/deduplicated at low level in the system.
    • This allows:
      • Upgrading software installed in the system without breaking already running processes.
      • Easier migration of running processes between physical computers.
      • Possibility to suspend/resume arbitrary processes to permament storage.
      • Possibility checkpoint/revert running process.
      • Possibility to clone/branch running process.

• Why such name ?
  • In short: it's just a number.
  • Many years ago inspired by the ideas of Forth (programming language) I decided to create my own implementation Fifth (computing/programming environment).
  • Then I realized I miss type safe object oriented capabilities. So I updated the name to Sixth and switched to Java.