Dispatches from the User Liberation Front
How will we escape the current Dark Age of Programming? What will trigger a Software Renaissance? History tells us that major intellectual shifts usually arise not from lone geniuses but from subcultures that suddenly coalesce in a burst of invention and discovery. I have found an interesting book that looks at the group dynamics of such subcultures: Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work by Michael P. Farrell (suggested by Patrick Collison). From the blurb:
Many artists,
Steve Krouse interviewed me on his podcast: De-Nerding Programming. There are some other interesting interviews, and he also hosts a Slack discussion.
Dear Jonathan,
We’re sorry to inform you that your submission #12
Title: Direct Programming
was rejected, and will not be presented at the LIVE 2018 workshop. Your reviews are included below; all papers were reviewed by 3 people. We had a record 22 submissions this year, and were only able to accept 10, so making the decision was hard.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your submission and we hope you find the reviewers’ comments helpful.
A short peek at what I’ve been working on, as a postscript to my Direct Programming video.
Programming could be much much easier most of the time. This unnecessary difficulty wastes the effort of professional programmers, but worse, prevents many people from programming at all. The problem is a nasty hairball of culture and technology and money that is not easily untangled. I’ll try to address this essay to a general audience.