Software Disenchantment (2018)

I piled standout quotes below.

I think a big takeaway from the intersection of Bret Victor, Alan Kay, Jim Hollan and the ink&switch folks and your work is that the right dynamic interface can be the "place we live in" on the computer.

Victor shows a history of interactive direct manipulation interfaces, live environments where explorations of models or the creation of art go hand in hand with everything else related to that task: data input, explicit (programmatic) requirements and the visual output.

Hollan and ink&switch show the environment (ZUIs, canvas) can contain everything for doing work, the code alongside any manipulation of the viewport that can be conceived. Tools infinitely more advanced than Microsoft OneNote and designed 40 years ago.

From what I know about your work, I see another take on the environment I want to live in on the computer. I dont understand why I would want to lose power by stepping away from my language/interpreter/compiler/repl into a GUI or some portal when I can bring whatever it is which is nice about GUIs or portals into my dynamic computing environment. I very much want a personal DSL or set of DSLs for what I do on the computer, and I want to be able to hook into anything ala middle mouse button in plan9.

The superior alternative to walled gardens and this absurd world of bloat and 'feature loss' (for lack of a better term for software engineering's enthusiastic rejection of history) seems to be known, and facets of it advocated by you and these others. It seems clear that "using the computer" needs to return to "programming the computer" and that to achieve that we need to fundamentally change "programming the computer" to be a more communicative activity, to foster a better relationship between the computer and the user.

Where is this work being done now? VPRI shut down 2 years ago, Dynamicland seems to be on hiatus? I am inspired most these days by indie developers who write their own tools and build wild looking knowledge engines or what they sometimes call "trackers."[1] And of course the histories and papers put forward by the above and their predecessors. And I play with my own, building an environment where I can write, draw, code, execute and interact with it all. I see no existing product which approaches what I want.

> Everyone is busy building stuff for right now, today, rarely for tomorrow.

> Even when efficient solutions have been known for ages, we still struggle with the same problems: package management, build systems, compilers, language design, IDEs.

> You need to occasionally throw stuff away and replace it with better stuff.

> Business won’t care Neither will users. They are only learned to expect what we can provide.

> There’s no competition either. Everybody is building the same slow, bloated, unreliable products.

> The only thing required is not building on top of a huge pile of crap that modern toolchain is.

> I want something to believe in, a worthy end goal, a future better than what we have today, and I want a community of engineers who share that vision.

[1]: https://webring.xxiivv.com

That statement contradicts itself. Is this satire?

> All of this bloated 'shitware' today is the result of it having been written by people who a) have no deeper understanding of what the computer is actually doing; also known as typical Python/Java/etc/etc/etc programmers, and/or b) simply not giving a damn about conservation of resources--as further evidenced by all of the other extremely wasteful and destructive habits they hold in their personal lives, and in their societies in general.

Everything has a cost / benefit associated with it. Pretending otherwise show how little you know about engineering.

> I'm working to construct, in my own computing life, something of a 'personal oasis', which is increasingly removed and estranged from all of the horrible things I see Other People out there having to suffer in their personal computing lives, thanks to talentless 'developers' who Just Don't Fucking Care. Some of these pricks actually have the audacity to call themselves 'engineers', even.

I dunno how far your head has to be up your own behind to actually believe this? It not like most developers these days work on large software projects that are normally poorly costed, estimated, planned usually with stifling restrictions because certain "enterprise" technology is mandated by some architect who hasn't written a line of code in a couple of decades. Most people like a consistent regular income which allows them to support themselves and their family. I suspect these concerns are more important then incoherent ramblings of some guy on HN.

> iOS 11 dropped support for 32-bit apps. That means if the developer isn’t around at the time of the iOS 11 release or isn’t willing to go back and update a once-perfectly-fine app, chances are you won’t be seeing their app ever again.

but then he also says:

> To have a healthy ecosystem you need to go back and revisit. You need to occasionally throw stuff away and replace it with better stuff.

So which is it? If you want to replace stuff with something better, that means the old stuff won't work anymore... or, it will work by placing a translation/emulation layer around it, which he describes as:

> We put virtual machines inside Linux, and then we put Docker inside virtual machines, simply because nobody was able to clean up the mess that most programs, languages and their environment produce. We cover shit with blankets just not to deal with it.

Seems like he wants it both ways.