The biggest artifact from STEPS was Frank, which was at the time bootstrapped using Squeak Smalltalk and included the work from Ian Piumarta (IDST/Maru, which was a fully bootstrapped LISP down to the metal), Dan Amelang (Nile, the graphics language, and Gezira, the 2.5D graphics library implemented in Nile, which both depended on Maru), Alex Warth (OMeta, which had some sort of relationship to Ian's work on Maru), Yoshiki Ohshima (a lot of the experimental things from Alan's demos of Frank were made by Yoshiki) and then several other names. I got close to getting Frank working, but honestly, I'm not sure it's worth it at this point. A lot of the work is 10-15 years old, and the last time I dove in, I ran into issues running 32-bit binaries. The individual components are more interesting and could be packaged together in some other way.
Since it was a research project, STEPS never quite achieved a cohesive, unified experience, but they proved that the individual components could be substantially minimized and the cost of developing them amortized over a large project like a full GUI environment. Nile and some of the applications of Maru, like a minimal but functioning TCP/IP stack that can be compiled to bare metal by virtue of being made in Maru, still fascinate me.
Work on Maru is ongoing, albeit run by a community (with some input from Ian), Nile has been somewhat reborn of late, Ohm is again under active development as the successor to OMeta and Alan is still around.
(Source: Dan is a friend and colleague, and I've met a few of the STEPS/VPRI people that way.)
Since it was a research project, STEPS never quite achieved a cohesive, unified experience, but they proved that the individual components could be substantially minimized and the cost of developing them amortized over a large project like a full GUI environment. Nile and some of the applications of Maru, like a minimal but functioning TCP/IP stack that can be compiled to bare metal by virtue of being made in Maru, still fascinate me.
Work on Maru is ongoing, albeit run by a community (with some input from Ian), Nile has been somewhat reborn of late, Ohm is again under active development as the successor to OMeta and Alan is still around.
(Source: Dan is a friend and colleague, and I've met a few of the STEPS/VPRI people that way.)