- Jul 2024
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wryl.tech wryl.tech
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Programming models, user interfaces, and foundational hardware can, and must, be shallow and composable. We must, as a profession, give agency to the users of the tools we produce. Relying on towering, monolithic structures sprayed with endless coats of paint cannot last. We cannot move or reconfigure them without tearing them down.
Counterpoint: the judicious use of abstraction is/can be, in some instances, the solution to giving users agency and reconfigurability.
Software that has to be torn down is the result of software built upon bad abstractions. Abstractions are not ipso fact bad. They just need to be chosen on the criteria of whether or not they solve a problem.
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The software crisis doesn't just apply to the profession of building software, but to anybody that uses software. Users have little to no control, save for things afforded to them by the author.
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- Mar 2024
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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This comment is close, but it's also about control.
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- Oct 2023
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ln.hixie.ch ln.hixie.ch
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please. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll do it myself!
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- Jan 2023
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www.geoffreylitt.com www.geoffreylitt.com
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Software should be a malleable medium, where anyone can edit their tools to better fit their personal needs. The laws of physics aren’t relevant here; all we need is to find ways to architect systems in such a way that they can be tweaked at runtime, and give everyone the tools to do so.
It's clear that gklitt is referring to the ability of extensions to augment the browser, but: * it's not clear that he has applied the same thought process to the extension itself (which is also software, after all) * the conception of in-browser content as software tooling is likely a large reason why the perspective he endorses here is not more widespread—that content is fundamentally a copy of a particular work, in the parlance of US copyright law (which isn't terribly domain-appropriate here so much as its terminology is useful)
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- Dec 2022
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www.sicpers.info www.sicpers.info
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It feels weird to say this in 2020, when the idea was presented as fait accompli in 1997, but an enabling open source software movement would operate more like a bazaar than a cathedral. There wouldn’t be an “upstream”, there would be different people who all had the version of the software that worked best for them. It would be easy to evaluate, compare, combine and modify versions, so that the version you end up with is the one that works best for you, too.
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- Nov 2022
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www.inkandswitch.com www.inkandswitch.com
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In Potluck, we encourage people to write data in freeform text, and define searches to parse structure from the text.
From a gradual enrichment standpoint I understand but from a data entry standpoint this seems like more work.
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- Aug 2022
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brent-noorda.com brent-noorda.com
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Editorial: The real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed: to democratize programming. It wouldn’t belong in any business plan, and I seldom mentioned to anyone, but the real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed was not about making money (although paying the mortgage was always important). The real reason was because of the feeling I had when I programmed a computer to perform work for me
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milk.com milk.com
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Roughly stated, my overarching career mission is to design, build, and deploy software platforms that put end users in control of their computing and data, in part by making it easy and natural for programmers to create software that honors user desire.
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- Jul 2022
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www.jwz.org www.jwz.org
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People only really contribute when they get something out of it. When someone is first beginning to contribute, they especially need to see some kind of payback, some kind of positive reinforcement, right away. For example, if someone were running a web browser, then stopped, added a simple new command to the source, recompiled, and had that same web browser plus their addition, they would be motivated to do this again, and possibly to tackle even larger projects.
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scattered-thoughts.net scattered-thoughts.net
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Free as in ...? Points out that freedoms afforded by foss software to the average computer user are effectively the same as proprietary software, because it's too difficult to even find the source and build it, let alone make any changes. Advocates the foss developers should not think only about the things that users are not legally prevented from doing, but about what things they are realistically empowered and supported in doing.
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scattered-thoughts.net scattered-thoughts.net
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In terms of this analogy, a lot of objections to end-user programming sound to me like arguing that Home Depot is a waste of time because their customers will never be able to build their own skyscrapers. And then on the other side are the people arguing that people will be able to build their own skyscrapers and it will change the world. I just think it would be nice if people had the tools to put up their own shelves if they wanted to.
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- Jun 2022
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Emacs has aspects of the right thing
See also: The Pinocchio Problem
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cristobal.space cristobal.space
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See also; plugging these: * A new publishing discipline * plain.txt.htm (An assembler)
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This is an excellent piece, even though the writing is (probably intentionally) in places too obscure.
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- May 2022
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www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com
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as if the only option we had to eat was factory-farmed fast food, and we didn’t have any way to make home-cooked meals
See also An app can be a home-cooked meal along with this comment containing RMS's remarks with his code-as-recipe metaphor in the HN thread about Sloan's post:
some of you may not ever write computer programs, but perhaps you cook. And if you cook, unless you're really great, you probably use recipes. And, if you use recipes, you've probably had the experience of getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who's sharing it. And you've probably also had the experience — unless you're a total neophyte — of changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don't have to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some mushrooms, 'cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your doctor said you should cut down on salt — whatever. You can even make bigger changes according to your skill. And if you've made changes in a recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your friends might say, “Hey, could I have the recipe?” And then, what do you do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with functionally useful recipes of any kind.
Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program's a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it's just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it because the job it was written to do isn't exactly what you want. It did a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And after you've changed it, that's likely to be useful for other people. Maybe they have a job to do that's like the job you do. So they ask, “Hey, can I have a copy?” Of course, if you're a nice person, you're going to give a copy. That's the way to be a decent person.
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flak.tedunangst.com flak.tedunangst.com
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Interesting that this is written by a BSD guy.
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www.mindprod.com www.mindprod.comSCID1
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Show me a switch statement as if it had been handled with a set of subclasses. There is underlying deep structure here. I should be able to view the code as if it had been done with switch or as if it had been done with polymorphism. Sometimes you are interested in all the facts about Dalmatians. Sometimes you are interested in comparing all the different ways different breeds of dogs bury their bones. Why should you have to pre-decide on a representation that lets you see only one point of view?
similar to my strawman for language skins
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www.dreamsongs.com www.dreamsongs.comOUP Book1
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the very existence of a master plan means, by definition, that the members of the community can have little impact on the future shape of their community,
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- Apr 2022
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standardebooks.org standardebooks.org
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Why is Standard Ebooks sending
content-security-policy: default-src 'self';
? This is not an appropriate use. (And it keeps things like the Hypothesis sidebar from loading.)
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buttondown.email buttondown.email
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To some extent this is understandable. We don’t know how to design things in such a way that they are easily customizable by everyone.
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www.colbyrussell.com www.colbyrussell.com
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except its codebase is completely incomprehensible to anyone except the original maintainer. Or maybe no one can seem to get it to build, not for lack of trying but just due to sheer esotericism. It meets the definition of free software, but how useful is it to the user if it doesn't already do what they want it to, and they have no way to make it do so?
Kartik made a similar remark in an older version of his mission page:
Open source would more fully deliver on its promise; are the sources truly open if they take too long to grok, so nobody makes the effort?
https://web.archive.org/web/20140903010656/http://akkartik.name/about
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akkartik.name akkartik.name
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A big cause of complex software is compatibility and the requirement to support old features forever.
I don't think so. I think it's rather the opposite. Churn is one of the biggest causes for what makes modifying software difficult. I agree, however, with the later remarks about making it easy to delete code where it's no longer useful.
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www.research-collection.ethz.ch www.research-collection.ethz.chuntitled1
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Ihavelearnttoabandonsuchattemptsofadaptationfairlyquickly,andtostartthedesignofanewprogramaccordingtomyownideasandstandards
I have learnt to abandon such attempts of adaptation fairly quickly, and to start the design of a new program according to my own ideas and standards
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Feature request (implement something that allows the following): 1. From any page containing a bookmarklet, invoke the user-stored bookmarklet בB 2. Click the bookmarklet on the page that you wish to be able to edit in the Bookmarklet Creator 3. From the window that opens up, navigate to a stored version of the Bookmarklet Creator 4. Invoke bookmarklet בB a second time from within the Bookmarklet Creator
Expected results:
The bookmarklet from step #2 is decoded and populates the Bookmarklet Creator's input.
To discriminate between invocation type II (from step #2) and invocation type IV (from step #4), the Bookmarklet Creator can use an appropriate class (e.g. https://w3id.example.org/bookmarklets/protocol/#code-input) or a
meta
-based pragma or link relation.
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www.donnelly-house.net www.donnelly-house.net
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work-around
Bookmarklets and the JS console seem to be the workaround.
For very large customizations, you may run into browser limits on the effective length of the bookmarklet URI. For a subset of well-formed programs, there is a way to store program parts in multiple bookmarklets, possibly loaded with the assistance of a separate bookmarklet "bootloader", although this would be tedious. The alternative is to use the JS console.
In FIrefox, you can open a given script that you've stored on your computer by pressing Ctrl+O/Cmd+O, selecting the file as you would in any other program, and then pressing Enter. (Note that this means you might need to press Enter twice, since opening the file in question merely puts its contents into the console input and does not automatically execute it—sort of a hybrid clipboard thing.) I have not tested the limits of the console input for e.g. input size.
As far as I know, you can also use the JS console to get around the design of the dubious WebExtensions APIs—by ignoring them completely and going back to the old days and using XPCOM/Gecko "private" APIs. The way you do is is to open about:addons by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A (or whatever), opening or pasting the code you want to run, and then pressing Enter. This should I think give you access to all the old familiar Mozilla internals. Note, though, that all bookmarklet functionality is disabled on about:addons (not just affecting bookmarklets that would otherwise violate CSP by loading e.g. an external script or dumping an inline one on the page`).
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CSP is taking away too much of the user's power and control over their browser use
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Apparently there is a CSP ability to stop inline scripts from executing. I have not come across any sites that use that feature and/or the browser I am using does not support it.
There're lots.
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software will work only if we provide the tools to fix it when it goes wrong
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- Mar 2022
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www.cs.virginia.edu www.cs.virginia.edu
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To realize this potential, we must provide a medium that can be mastered by a single individual. Any barrier that exists between the user and some part of the system will eventually be a barrier to creative expression. Any part of the system that cannot be changed or that is not sufficiently general is a likely source of impediment.
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www.infoworld.com www.infoworld.com
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Whether to inject behavior into a Web page is my choice. How I do so is nobody's business. If a need that can be met with a bookmarklet instead requires a set of browser-specific extensions, that's a tax on developers.
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- Jan 2022
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What is End User Computing (EUC)? Thanks to the progressive introduction of DevOps, attention to the role of the end user in software development and testing has increased significantly. It is now important to think like an end user when we develop and test software. After all, that's what we're all doing it for.
What is End User Computing (EUC)? Thanks to the progressive introduction of DevOps, attention to the role of the end user in software development and testing has increased significantly. It is now important to think like an end user when we develop and test software. After all, that's what we're all doing it for.
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lobste.rs lobste.rs
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Make simple changes to (some carefully chosen fork of) any project in an afternoon, no matter how large it is. Gain an hour’s worth of understanding for an hour’s worth of effort, rather than a quantum leap in understanding after a week or month of effort.
Accessibility is more important, after all, than Kartik says it is (elsewhere; cf recent Mastodon posts).
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Local file Local file
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<a href="https://web.hypothes.is/help/" class="hyp-u-horizontal-spacing--2 hyp-u-layout-row--center HelpPanel-tabs__link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><span>Help topics</span>
How to get remote control over the Hypothesis sidebar (one way, at least):
- Use the bookmarklet to open the sidebar
- Click the sidebar's "Help" icon in the top right
- Right click the "Help topics" link and select "Inspect" in the context menu to open the element in the browser devtools
- Remove "noopener" from the link (easiest way is to just delete the element's "rel" attribute)
- Change the link target to something other than "_blank" (e.g. "foobar")
- In the sidebar, click the now-modified "Help topics" link
- For good measure, in the new tab that opens, navigate to the same URL loaded in the sidebar (should be something like
https://hypothes.is/app.html
with a site-specific URL fragment; you can get the actual URL from the devtools JS console withdocument.documentURI
, or right-clicking the sidebar and selecting "View Frame Info")
From the secondary tab ("foobar" opened by click in step #6) you should now have unrestricted, scriptable access to the DOM of the original sidebar iframe, using e.g. the JS console in devtools instance or a bookmarklet applied to the secondary tab—access it as
window.opener
.
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- Oct 2021
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vimeo.com vimeo.com
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Ungar, around @1:00:00:
I try to explain to people that the notion of compiler is broken. Of course I learned this from Smalltalk, but what we want to build is experiences--artificial realities that convince you that your source code is real. It's directly executed. There's no lag between editing and running[...] The environment stresses things in your program, not tools--which is another rant I have. It's this whole idea that we want to put you in an artificial reality--I got that from Randy [Smith]--in which it's easy and natural and low-cognitive-burden to get the computer to do what you want it to do, rather than running language translators that turn weird strings of text into bits the machine can run
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- Sep 2021
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I don’t even minify page assets
Good. Don't. The number of people who think this is a virtue is frightening. The rationale is usually not well-reasoned and whatever values they pretend to hold can almost always be shown to be hollow.
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- Jul 2021
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unhosted.org unhosted.org
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The world could benefit from a curated set of bookmarklets in the style of Smalltalk ("doIt", "printIt", etc buttons) that you can place in your bookmarks bar (or copy into a bookmarks document and open in it in your browser), where the purpose would be to allow you to:
- access a new scratch area (about:blank) for experimentation
- make it editable, or make any given element on a page editable
- let you evaluate any code written into the scratch space
scratch.js aims for something something similar, and though laudable it falls short of what I actually crave (and what I imagine would be be most beneficial/appreciated by the public).
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- Apr 2021
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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This project will be great for instruction and portable reproducible science
This is what I'm aiming for with triplescripts.org. Initially, I'm mostly focused on the reproducibility the build process for software. In principle, it can encompass all kinds of use, and I actually want it to, but for practical reasons I'm trying to go for manageable sized bites instead of very large ones.
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stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
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(Yes, I realize from a technical, end-user perspective this really doesn't matter.)
The word "technical" in this sentence doesn't seem to belong or to clarify anything. I think it would be clearer without it.
But I think I understand what he's saying, which is that technical details don't matter to the end user. They only know/see/care if it works or not.
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- Mar 2021
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multi-dimensional erector set that we're going forever
"A multi-dimensional erector set that will go on forever..."
No, unfortunately not forever.
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- Oct 2020
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www.basefactor.com www.basefactor.com
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If you want to implement a form with a superb User Experience, you have to take care of many variables:
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- difficult/hard problem
- a lot of things to consider
- user experience
- can't keep entire system in your mind at once (software development) (scope too large)
- form design
- easy to get wrong
- too hard/difficult/much work to expect end-developers to write from scratch (need library to do it for them)
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- Jun 2020
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signal.org signal.org
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The EARN IT act turns Section 230 protection into a hypocritical bargaining chip. At a high level, what the bill proposes is a system where companies have to earn Section 230 protection by following a set of designed-by-committee “best practices” that are extraordinarily unlikely to allow end-to-end encryption. Anyone who doesn’t comply with these recommendations will lose their Section 230 protection.
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www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
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Despite its opposition, EARN-IT is the clearest threat yet to end-to-end encryption, given this clever twist in pushing the onus onto the platforms to avoid transmitting illegal content, rather than mandating a lawful interception approach.
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