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Future of Coding Weekly 2023/12 Week 4
2023-12-25 19:22
🛸 Retrofuturistic software systems 👓 Touch Designer 📘 The Architecture of Open Source Applications
Two Minute Week
🎥 Datalog notebook via Peter Saxton
I built a datalog notebook. I want to try and tie this to some public data sources and see how end user friendly it is as an interface
Our Work
📝 Apps considered harmful via Duncan Cragg
"Apps considered harmful"
(or "I can't believe how you all tolerate apps")
My latest: Apps considered harmful
📝 LLVM IR: Playing around with LLVM IR via FreeMasen
Wrote up a little post about learning LLVM's Intermediate Representation
🎠 The Lua Carousel "productivity suite" via Kartik Agaram
4 primitives that can be composed into little productivity apps for yourself, particularly on a phone or tablet.
I think the next major piece I'm missing is images 🤔
🎥 A tool to augment creative problem-solving. via Vardnan Sivarajah
Hey everyone! 👋 I’m a student who’s been working on a side project to explore how LLMs may augment creative problem solving.
I’ve synthesised everything into a rough concept I would love to hear your perspectives on:
~Here is a quick demo:~ A tool to augment creative problem-solving.
Initial inspirations include Jef Raskin’s “Archy”, Mozilla’s old “Ubiquity” project, the thinking of Vannevar Bush, and recent tools like “mymind”. There are still many ideas and user experience concerns to be properly fleshed out, but hopefully it’s an interesting direction.
🌳 Grapher via Nilesh Trivedi
I had helped build this tool to create civilizational tech trees so that resources (like talent and funds) can be directed where they are most impactful.
Foresight institute has used it to map the tech tree in 5 domains: Intelligent Cooperation, Spacetech, Neurotech, Molecular Machines, and Longevity: foresight.org/tech-tree
SVG-based interactive graph dataset editor with live real-time collaboration. Powers Foresight Institute's civilizational tech trees: https://foresight.org/tech-tree/ and http://LearnAwesome.org|LearnAwesome.org's learning roadmaps: https://learnawesome.org/#/roadmaps
Devlog Together
🎠 New version after 9 days via Kartik Agaram
I built a little voice recorder in Lua Carousel last night
One little detail here involves Android permissions. I almost ended up asking for microphone permissions in Lua Carousel. Luckily I managed to stop and ask myself what the user experience is. "Hi, I'm Lua Carousel, could I please have access to your mic?" Ick! It seems like a bad idea to ask for a permission for the whole app just in case some single script uses it. Probably affects the conversions from this particular blog post, but I don't want to feel like I'm contributing to the general fatigue over apps asking for permissions. 🤷
aside: The whole issue of passwords and permissions is a huge UX issue that deserves a long discussion on of-end-user-programming. Users should be allowed to just use a device without being forced to answer a bunch of questions about technical issues and needing to keep a bowl full of anti-anxiety meds nearby. Imagine if my refrigerator required me to perform some ritual before allowing me to put my recently-bought lettuce into the crisper.
💡 TadiWeb via Ivan Reese
I've been enjoying the "tadi web" approach Lu has been espousing lately. I also had some nice discussions at Strange Loop with Devine and a few others about minimizing friction / dependencies / build steps, both broadly but also specifically pertaining to publishing one's personal site. So in this spirit, I've been reworking my personal site a bit. I plan to finally add RSS and, even though it goes against the spirit of Lu and Devine's approaches, add a more complex build process that enables some functionality I've long wanted.
Starting to get back into the reason I got roped into developing for mobile in the first place: my friend is a doctor trying to use his iPad to analyze datasets like this plot of Covid concentrations in waste water in two random testing stations over 2 months.
I've been figuring out some improvements to the live programming environment for my apps. Some little videos in 🧵
🎠 One finger to pan, two fingers to zoom via Kartik Agaram
Pan and zoom gestures on a multitouch screen
Thinking Together
A large codebase is a realm ruled by the iron fist of legalism. In addition, it is a patchwork of many different jurisdictions, each with their own overlapping but subtly different laws. And it's incredibly easy to spawn a new jurisdiction!
Content
🛸 The Medley Interlisp Project via Mariano Guerra
The Medley Interlisp Project: interlisp.org
a retrofuturistic software system
What did we leave behind on the path to developing today's computer systems? Could there be lessons for the future of computing hidden in the past? Enter the Medley software environment to explore these questions.
📝 Designing a Programming Language to Speedrun Advent of Code via Nilesh Trivedi
background: blog.vero.site/post/noulith
🎥 Redeeming Open Source with ABE - Sid Kasivajhula, feat. Michael Ballantyne - RacketCon 2023 via Kartik Agaram
This looks tantalizing for the economic angle in particular: Redeeming Open Source with ABE
The repo for that is github.com/drym-org/dia ~, but sadly there's no documentation yet~ github.com/drym-org/foundation. If anybody has more details or pointers please chime in.
(Thanks Konrad Hinsen.)
Present Company
🕹️ Mobile Suit Baba via Ivan Reese
Free (for the moment) game from the maker of Baba Is You, in which Baba pilots a mech suit (a la Into The Breach)
📘 The Architecture of Open Source Applications via Daniel Buckmaster
I was exploring a domain outside programming today and thought "gee, I wonder if somebody has written a detailed end-to-end case study about this?' Then, I wondered, "gee, has anybody written a detailed end-to-end case study about a software project?"
I always think of software as a very open and sharing community, where we talk about our work and learn from each other without too much secrecy. But I struggled to think of examples. Of course, we seem to be constantly publishing tiny, focused case studies as blog posts. And this is incredible and valuable. But my curiosity is now piqued about this other thing.
AOSA comes to mind, but what comes to others' minds?
👓 TouchDesigner: a visual development platform via Eli Mellen
Today I learned about TouchDesigner
Derivative is a software company that offers TouchDesigner, a visual development platform.