On 13 January 2013 02:15, David Barbour <dmbarbour_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> If you're just looking for shelter, perhaps. But if I'm searching for
> progress, I won't find links to PPIG. :)
Have you seen Alan Blackwell's hybrid of Photoshop and Excel?
http://layerlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/
> Spreadsheets are an excellent example of a programming interface that users
> easily grasp, yet are insufficient for real world programming. I'm hoping my
> RDP model will create the new spreadsheet - better at abstraction,
> composition, and side-effects. Command line interfaces are also a fine
> example - especially when they result in non-textual artifacts (e.g. charts,
> graphs, widgets, sounds, behaviors).
Surely *absolutely masses* of real world programming is successfully
done with spreadsheets.. Perhaps more than any other form.
> To clarify, I think that the relationship between "live programming" and
> "music" is one of community interest, not of any essential nature.
Well that depends on how important you think community is in defining
fundamental meaning, or how essential music is to understanding human
interaction and nature. Music certainly seems essential in that every
community has it and not being able to engage with music is a clinical
condition.
However, I know what you mean and kind of I agree -- the culture of
practice around improvising music and video animation is an excellent
research platform for live coding, but there is more to it than that.
I think it's less confusing to use the older term "interactive
programming" when taking a more general view here.
> And even
> if you assume an audience is necessary, that could broadly include such
> things as as users of a service, players in a game.
For the record I don't think an audience is at all necessary for live
coding, I was just pointing out that you can't observe a live coder
who doesn't have one..
> When I say live programming is for everyone, I don't mean that they should
> 'enjoy' it - just that they should participate in it.
Yes absolutely -- live coding has a huge intersection with end-user
programming, although has a place in professional software development
too.
> User-interfaces and
> their elements should be modeled as live programs in a language, i.e. such
> that every element can be inspected, extended, composed, abstracted,
> reused, remixed. Even if most users don't program, just using their UIs
> should subtly teach useful programming principles and intuitions, providing
> easy literacy for when they change their minds (as will often be the case
> for *young* users). I believe that requires creating a new paradigm, one
> closely aligned to HCI.
Yes this is a grand and fine aim, which I very much share. I think
there is something missing though - social context. As programmer
culture is populated by those who are often atypical on the autistic
spectrum, programmers should never forget -- in general people learn
from each other, in social situations. This new paradigm needs to
consider human factors involved, otherwise we'll keep solving the
wrong problems.
I think including music (rather than e.g. implementing business or
military system designs) as one of the starting points brings a real
opportunity to consider human interaction and learning in programming
HCI.
> What everyone in the audience will 'enjoy' are the network effects of such a
> system: the user-generated content; the plethora of extensions and tweaks
> coming from the hundreds or thousands of users who like (or don't mind)
> programming.
Wait, isn't user generated content about corporations profiting from
free labour? I think the 'audience' should enjoy having more
understanding of and control over their lives, not feeding into an
computational entertainment system..
> Only a bad tool will make it difficult to achieve competence, and only a
> fool will fail to understand his own limits. Live programming is potentially
> the "ultimate" tool - one of great flexibility and application, and growing
> more so as programmable elements and networks become more ubiquitous.
This seems over idealistic to me. With appstores etc, things are
becoming less programmable.
> Live
> programming shouldn't be more 'surprising' than any other live performance.
> There will always be enough external challenges (e.g. matching moods and
> themes, reacting to audience and environment, breathing life into our own
> short-lived inspirations and witticisms, collaborative efforts) that we
> really don't need to handicap ourselves or our tools just to keep it
> interesting.
I think you misunderstand me. Yes we should have deep understanding of
the systems we use, but we should use that to reach beyond our own
understanding.
> I think, rather than saying "live programming should be one long surprise",
> it might be better to say "live programming should always allow me to
> stretch beyond my limits, improvise, learn, and find new limits". And that's
> perfectly reasonable. After all, that's half of what distinguishes
> *programming* (live or not) from simple consumption.
Yes agreed, that is what I meant.
Cheers
alex
--
http://yaxu.org/
Received on Sun Jan 13 2013 - 11:17:56 GMT