In the front of toolkits that are already exposing their building blocks while providing programming environments for the user to change them, I would put the rich tradition of Smalltalk systems that do precisely that, particularly its current evolution in environments like Pharo and Glamorous Toolkit (GToolkit).
The think that, for me, the issue is more cultural that infrastructural. We already have programming environments that convey more powerful visions and practices of informatics than the hegemonic ones, popularized by Big Corp Inc. But such powerful already present uses are marginal. In my case, a way to bridge such gap was to build tools like Grafoscopio and put them in grassroots communities like the local hackerspace, HackBo. And now I’m porting the lessons from Grafoscopio (build on “plain” Pharo) to GToolkit via MiniDocs.
So, a more compelling question, for me at least, is to tackle the cultural part of moldable infrastructures. And aspect that I have seen consistently overlook in more technocentric discussions (more about that in a future post).
BTW, talking about infrastructure and culture: I don’t know which is the policy regarding old threads. One of the things I like the most from Discourse forum software is this sense of serendipity and being able to revive something old and making it anew, so nobody arrives never “late” to the conversation and can sync him/herself with the community memory at his/her own rhythm. Let me know if there is another policy regarding retaking old threads.
Cheers,