Dec 16: Will Computers Ever Become Easy to Use?

Jimmy MillerDiscovery Coding I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. - Steven King In writing (particularly fiction writing), there is a generally accepted distinction between authors who start by writing an outline and those who discover their stories through the process of...

Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. Against a universal definition of ‘type’ (pdf) This is the final entry in the series and I'll be honest, I'm a bit glad it's over. It's been hard to consistently find the time every day to 1) find a paper I'm truly interested in writing about 2) read that paper in a way I can summarize it 3) write...

Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. Do Artifacts Have Politics? (pdf) One question that I don't think gets asked enough is how "good code at work" differs from "good code at home"? For many years I didn't quite see the distinction between the two. Isn't it a fact of the matter what things make for good code? Why would code I write for...

Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. Once More—A Computer Revolution - Joseph Weizenbaum (pdf) Summary Ran out of time today. Will the home computer be as pervasive as today's television se,s? The answer almost certainly is no. The home, pictured in the accounts of home computer advocates, is middle class, or even upper middle class....

Jimmy MillerThis is part of an Advent Series. What is Conceptual Engineering and What Should It Be? (pdf) I've loved choosing philosophy papers for this series. And so, I decided today to do the same. But before you click away, this one is incredibly applicable to software. In fact, David Chalmers thinks that Software Engineering helps address a...