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Future of Coding Weekly 2023/08 Week 1
2023-08-07 00:02
📢 Founding Engineer at Val Town 💻 Wikifunctions ✊ Local-First Software
Devlog Together
📝 Rational Mechanics and Natural Mathematics via Kartik Agaram
Today I want to learn just enough topology to make sense of boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf
Thinking Together
💬 Eli Mellen
You know that thing when playing Pokemon games where after you throw a Pokeball you frantically tap the action button to ... do something? It is never made clear if this helps or even does anything at all.
What are other ghost-mechanics like this in games or software that you know of, where folks often take actions that aren’t clearly signposted to actually do anything?
The most immediate other example that comes to mind is swiping apps away in the iOS app switcher, but that isn’t exactly the same thing, since, even if it doesn’t free up memory, it is a direct interaction that alters state (removes options from the app switcher).
🕹️ Outer Wilds via Josh Cho
Retrofitting of Medium
I tend to think every time a new medium is introduced, all the contents of the previous medium are ported over, without regard for fully understanding the new medium . For instance, films matured when it stopped porting over books, games matured when it stopped porting over movies, etc. An excellent example of this is Outer Wilds, a space-exploration time-traveling game which is simply impossible to recreate in any other medium. It fulfills the medium.
Given that, I think two new forms of medium are being introduced in the next 5 years: LLMs and VR. If we accept the supposition that there will be a lot of retrofitting of the medium, i.e. chat into LLMs, games into VR, what are the content that will truly fulfill the mediums of LLMs and VR?
Is there a reasonably decent JavaScript library that allows me to have a reasonably terminal-y experience in the browser, so I can implement a shell? Ideally with history, autocomplete, colors, etc. - and then with the ability to add DOM nodes too, so I can click, show images, etc. Preferably no backend necessary.
Content
🎥 Myths and Mythconceptions: What does it mean to be a programming language, anyhow? via Paul Tarvydas
💻 Wikifunctions via Mattia Fregola
" Wikifunctions is a Wikimedia project for everyone to collaboratively create and maintain a library of code functions to support the Wikimedia projects and beyond, in the world's natural and programming languages."
Includes an interesting sort-of-structured-editor in the playground too
📕 Real Life in Real Time via Walker Griggs
A new book caught my eye and maybe it'll catch yours?
The cultural ramifications of online live streaming, including its effects on identity and power in digital spaces.
Some consider live streaming—the broadcasting of video and/or audio footage live online—simply an internet fad or source of entertainment, yet it is at the center of the digital mediation of our lives. In this edited volume, Johanna Brewer, Bo Ruberg, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud present a broad range of essays that explore the cultural implications of live streaming, paying special attention to how it is shifting notions of identity and power in digital spaces. The diverse set of international authors included represent a variety of perspectives, from digital media studies to queer studies, from human-computer interaction to anthropology, and more.
✊ The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free? via Ivan Reese
A fun but slightly puffy article about local-first in Wired
🐘 nilesh (@nilesh@fosstodon.org) via Nilesh Trivedi
Test-driven development has the potential to turn #programming into a gameplay-like experience. Add live collaborators, real-time evaluation of relevant tests, visual feedback etc.
I had built this toy more than a decade ago. The tests would be evaluated on each keystroke and visually indicated as Red vs Green. Felt like fun.
Would be great to have this as a VS code extension.
🎥 Finding Meaning in Christopher Alexander's "The Nature of Order" via Kartik Agaram
This is the most insightful talk I've watched in recent memory.
Transcript: stefanlesser.substack.com/p/finding-meaning-in-the-nature-of
📢 Founding Engineer at Val Town via Steve Krouse
If you're in NY and wanted to work on a FoC company full time, Tom MacWright and I are hiring at Val Town. We're trying to make programming more fun, composable, and light. I've tried to take many of the ideas I've learned from this community and package them up into a practical product that's VC-fundable. Come join!
(Hopefully this question isn’t too far outside of “coding” and into “using”.) I’ve always had an interest in associative data management, but I’ve never found a tool I love for my use case. What I want to be able to do is catalog and visually explore:
- Ideas in some area of research
- Sources for those ideas: who has presented them
- Chains of reasoning: person A argues that because of ideas X and Y, therefore Z is true
- Commentary on those ideas: supporting, refuting, adapting
General mind-mapping tools don’t feel structured enough, but coding it from scratch has been intimidating. It feels like this must exist and I must just be bad at finding it. Do any of you have a tool you like for this use?