The Jamstack IDE, Darklang, and the Theory of The Adjacent Possible

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Heard @peterp mention in his talk with Max Stoiber (~13:45) that (and hopefully I’m not misquoting here) a Jamstack IDE was in the works. I’ve also heard @mojombo mention Darklang a few times, and with the theory of the adjacent possible being a thing Redwood seems to like to think about, it makes me wonder if @mojombo, you got that inspiration from Darklang and think that some kind of framework-editor integration is the future?

It definitely takes Redwood’s goal of integration to a “whole 'nother level”.

Some Background on The Theory of The Adjacent Possible

I think the theory originates from the famed complex systems scientist Stuart Kauffman. The space of possibilities in general is a core idea in complex systems science. I’m not sure how the space of possibilities and the adjacent possible relate to each other, other than it seems like the latter is a subset of the former (the “ways to get around my house” example being the simplest and most contrived: “If I’m in the living room, I can walk to the kitchen”–this is the adjacent possible, whereas all the ways you can walk around your house, or something like that, is roughly the space of possibilities. Cred: I trained as a complex systems scientist for ~ a year).

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Thanks for watching my talk! I actually misquoted Tom and mentioned “adjacent possibilities” instead of “the adjacent possible” :man_facepalming:… I had only really heard Tom talk about this concept, and hadn’t taken the time to understand it myself.

I think you’re exactly right about the origin of the term. There’s a book called " “Where Good Ideas Come From” by Steven Johnson where he expands on this, there’s a Blinklist summary of the key ideas.

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Of course; and all good! I don’t appreciate the idea enough myself. And for reference to all, here’s the extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=decoupled.studio.

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Nice! I spent a season of my career modeling complex adaptive systems… honestly loved it. And now I can’t not apply network theory to every problem – to a fault :laughing:

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