Alarming Development

I saw some interesting work on touch programming languages at Onward. You may already have seen Codify. That is still a mostly textual language, as the clickety-click of the keyboard in the video attests. The new research explores how to program entirely in touch, which requires avoiding typing as much as possible.
Continue reading “From text to touch”

Steve Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson, writes in the NY Times:

The ability to merge creativity with technology depends on one’s ability to be emotionally attuned to others. Mr. Jobs could be petulant and unkind in dealing with other people, which caused some to think he lacked basic emotional awareness. In fact, it was the opposite. He could size people up, understand their inner thoughts, cajole them, intimidate them, target their deepest vulnerabilities, and delight them at will. He knew, intuitively, how to create products that pleased, interfaces that were friendly, and marketing messages that were enticing.

He seems at first to be praising Jobs’ empathy, but ends up describing a psychopath. Only by not feeling the emotions of others can one learn to ruthlessly manipulate them. Ironically, the lack of empathy is actually a great enabler of creativity. Thinking differently threatens and upsets people. To be creative you need to not give a damn what anyone else thinks or feels.

New workshop at POPL: Off the Beaten Track: Underrepresented Problems for Programming Language Researchers. In other words: “New Problems for Old Solutions”.

I am program chair of Onward! 2012. What do you want to see?

Here is one thing I am thinking about. I understand that in the real sciences, conferences often accept papers based solely on an abstract. That wouldn’t work for Onward, or even most of CS. Perhaps we should instead use the opposite of an abstract: a “concrete”. That is, an example. A common problem with big-idea papers is the lack of examples, making them quite difficult to understand. Perhaps we ought to require authors to submit an example up front in lieu of an abstract. That procedure might be beneficial both for the authors and the reviewers.

Programming is not just engineering — it is design. All my hopes and beliefs about programming boil down to that one assertion, which has become my main cause. The misunderstanding of programming as engineering has many pernicious effects, infecting our tools, technologies, and practices. Computer Science embodies this fallacy in its very name. Therefore I have banded together with some other programming language researchers and developers to form the IFIP Working Group 2.16 on Programming Language Design.
Continue reading “A win for design”