Programs are a prison: Rethinking the building blocks of computing interfaces

Post by djrobstep » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #29

djrobstep wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with programming is not the syntax and other particularities, but inherent complexity of explaining the task to a computer. Not really. A great deal of the the complexity is accidental, not inherent. Take the example from the post of adding up some numbers in a table. The inherent complexity is very low, the complexity comes from all the stuff not inherent to the problem itself.

Real world is always complex, ambigous and changing. So any simple model will in time be found inadequate, and complex models unusable. The problem of programming isn't so much the interface. Text has been used for decades and remains a robust communication platform among humans. The real problem is defining the problem to be solved, its scope and adaptability to a complex and changing world. The difficulty is the ga…

Post by _y5hn » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

djrobstep wrote: post #31

_y5hn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real world is always complex, ambigous and changing. So any simple model will in time be found inadequate, and complex models unusable. The problem of programming isn't so much the interface. Text has been used for decades and remains a robust communication platform among humans. The real problem is defining the problem to be solved, its scope and adaptability to a complex and changing world. The difficulty is the ga…

What's vague and hard to define about adding up some numbers in a table?

Post by mrmonkeyman » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

djrobstep wrote: post #31

_y5hn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real world is always complex, ambigous and changing. So any simple model will in time be found inadequate, and complex models unusable. The problem of programming isn't so much the interface. Text has been used for decades and remains a robust communication platform among humans. The real problem is defining the problem to be solved, its scope and adaptability to a complex and changing world. The difficulty is the ga…

What's vague and hard to define about adding up some numbers in a table?

Post by AndresNavarro » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #27

samsquire wrote: post #12

I call this idea If you can see it you can use it and right click use. So if you see a filename on the CLI, you can right click on the file name and interact with the file with a GUI. Or you could hover over a tag in the browser of some dot syntax or table and right click and click Use. It would run various heuristics over the data to work out what the data is and then import it to the right program.

Like the Acme or Wily editors?

Post by _y5hn » Sat, Nov 07, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

AndresNavarro wrote: post #36

djrobstep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's vague and hard to define about adding up some numbers in a table?

Adding the numbers is not the problem, the problem is what the numbers represent, where do they come from (if they come from only one place...) where and for what are they needed. Quickly you have to consider different kinds of numeral systems, bases, decimal separators (which may be locale dependant), precision, units, the difference in adding time (or dates), or money in different currencies (with and without diffe…