Monday  2002-08-19   Software

Making software useful for people

As noted in Contours we are far from making software truly useful for normal users.

The Mac may have some chance of becoming a platform good enough to allow non-techie users to really mold the environment. Musicians and graphic artists don't count. I mean normal users. I'm afraid I'm not optimistic, but it is good to see some ferment.

Why the pessimism? Perhaps the shallow response to the death of Kristen Nygaard. I was amazed at the number of C++ developers who belive they are following in the footsteps of a man who changed the course of computer science so shipyard workers could participate in software design. (I realize that the dialog on Apple scripting is at a higher level.) How many developers are focused on how to involve the people who must live with software systems? It seems to me that instead of debating the merits of various scripting languages, a comparison of the ability of domain experts and stakeholders to interact with systems built with the contenders.

For developers Nygaard's most famous work is Simula ("the first object oriented programming language" from the late 1960's hence somehow an ancestor to C++). But most developers do not know of or care about his later contribution to software engineering. As Larry Tesler notes in his orbituary of Nygaard:

In the 1970's, Kristen was an early advocate of user participation in industrial systems design. His social research into the impacts of new technology on workers influenced landmark union-management agreements and legislation, in Norway and other countries.

Nygaard passed away on 2002-08-09. A few months before that the co-inventor of Simula Ole-Johan Dahl passed away prompting Nygaard to write a warm tribute to his friend.

 
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Saturday  2002-08-17   Software

Separation of content and presentation

An XML guru comes clean: "Separating Content from Presentation: Easier Said Than Done". What is suprising about this admission is that it is even necessary at all. By some accident of history, "separation of content and presentation" has become a credo, a motto, a religion.

Let's remind ourselves that it is nothing but an abstraction, a tool for clear thinking and better solution.

 
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Thursday  2002-08-01   Software

Scholarly duties of the humble programmer

From EWD archive

Like most of us, Edsger has always believed it a scientist's duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he has put that conviction into practice. For the last four decades, he has been mailing copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as "EWDs", to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Edsger's writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands.

Edsger's surname is Dijkstra.

A few random picks:

• "The humble programmer"
• "How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
• "What Computing Science is about"

There are also letters to and from Dijkstra, trip reports, and lecture notes over last forty years.

A sad update: Dijkstra passed away on 2002-08-06

 
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Monday  2002-07-29   Software

Contours' book recommendation

Contours' book recommendation is for serious students of computer science.

 
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Monday  2002-07-29   Software

RISKS

RISKS digest - or how computers amplify human follies.

 
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Monday  2002-07-29   Software

ALICE and SHRDLU

ALICE is a natural language artificial intelligence chat robot. Its creator Richard Wallace is also famous for his fallout with much of AI academia (see New York Times Magazine's profile on 2002-07-07). Slashdot is carrying a long interview with Dr Wallace.

SHRDLU was an earlier AI natural language program from 1968-1970 that is enjoying a revival. Its classic demo dialog is most instructive.

 
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Saturday  2002-07-20   Software

XML and Semantic Transparency

"XML and Semantic Transparency" by Robin Cover is one of the most important papers on XML and its applications.

 
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