Dispatches from the User Liberation Front
I submitted this abstract to PPIG’20 but have just withdrawn it. I’ve been working on this idea for the last 2 years. But lockdown has given me time to think about my research goals and it no longer seems like the right thing to be doing right now. It just isn’t going to make a dent. Leaving the abstract here as a marker.
Subtext 10 is well underway, but version 9 deserves some mention. I didn’t record a demo video as in the past, because I have concluded that medium fails to communicate in sufficient detail. In the future I am going to try the forms discussed in my last post. Unfortunately Subtext 9 has fallen between the cracks, and all it gets is this lousy blog post.
Continue reading “Subtext 9”I collaborated on this paper at PPIG19. They haven’t published the proceedings yet, so I’ve put the paper up here. Abstract:
Research on programming systems design needs to consider a wide range of aspects in their full complexity. This includes user interaction, implementation, interoperability but also the sustainability of its ecosystem and wider societal impact. Established methods of evaluation, such as formal proofs or user studies, impose a reductionist view that makes it difficult to see programming systems in their full complexity and, consequently, force researchers to adopt simplistic perspectives.
This paper asks whether we can create more amenable methods of evaluation derived from existing informal practices such as multimedia essays, demos, and interactive tutorials. These popular forms incorporate recorded or scaffolded interaction, often embedded in a text that guides the reader. Can we augment such forms with structure and guidelines to obtain methods of evaluation suitable for peer review? We do not answer this question, but merely seek to identify some of the problems and instigate a community discussion. In that spirit we propose to hold a panel session at the conference.
This will still be just a research prototype of a programming language and environment, so I don’t care about deployment issues. Want to have:
Options:
From the beginning this blog had the subtitle “Dispatches from the Programmer Liberation Front”. I have changed it to the User Liberation Front. Really this change has been building for years now. I started out wanting to fix programming, to help realize its full potential, and to uplift our tribe of nerdy misfits. I slowly realized that the heart of the problem is not our technology but our culture itself. Programming sucks because we like it that way. It entertains us with puzzles; it affirms our differences from the outgroup; it rewards us with power and wealth. Enough. I am now an anti-programmer.
The User Liberation Front works to put the power of computers into the hands of users, freeing them from the domination of technologists and corporations. Spreadsheets do this today. We will spread the freedom of spreadsheets to other domains of software, so that, users no more, all can create the software they need.
I am not alone in this. Are you with us?