Intro

Part 1 Sponsor: Replit

Part 2 Sponsor: Glide

Part 3 Ending

Mary Rose Cook is a programmer with.. just.. so many side projects, oh my — and, she works at Airtable. Mary created Gitlet, a version of Git in 1000 lines of JavaScript with extensive annotation. That might be her most well-known project, but of particular interest to our community are her programming environments Isla and Code Lauren. These projects explore syntax, learnability, execution visualization, and other surfaces of the development experience that I think we all would love to see reinvented. Mary and I talk about the design decisions behind these projects, naturally. But more importantly, we look at the ways they failed to achieve the goals Mary had for them, and what we should all be mindful of on our investigations into the future of computing. The discussion also touches on the theme of "escape hatches", picks up a few lessons in UI design from the video games Into The Breach and The Witness, and reflects on what people think programming is like before they actually learn what it really is. Lighthearted but full of wisdom.

We have a new sponsor for today's episode: Glide. If you're excited about making end-user software development a reality, go to glideapps.com/jobs and apply to join their team.

As ever, the transcript for this episode is sponsored by Replit.

The show notes and transcript are available right here: https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/050

<a href="https://maryrosecook.com/">Mary Rose Cook</a> is a programmer with.. just.. so many side projects, oh my &mdash; and, she works at <a href="https://airtable.com/">Airtable</a>. Mary created <a href="http://gitlet.maryrosecook.com/">Gitlet</a>, a version of Git in 1000 lines of JavaScript with extensive annotation. That might be her most well-known project, but of particular interest to our community are her programming environments <a href="http://islalanguage.org/">Isla</a> and <a href="http://codelauren.com/">Code Lauren</a>. These projects explore syntax, learnability, execution visualization, and other surfaces of the development experience that I think we all would love to see reinvented. Mary and I talk about the design decisions behind these projects, naturally. But more importantly, we look at the ways they failed to achieve the goals Mary had for them, and what we should all be mindful of on our investigations into the future of computing. The discussion also touches on the theme of "escape hatches", picks up a few lessons in UI design from the video games <a href="https://subsetgames.com/itb.html">Into The Breach</a> and <a href="http://the-witness.net/">The Witness</a>, and reflects on what people think programming is like before they actually learn what it really is. Lighthearted but full of wisdom.
We have a new sponsor for today's episode: <a href="https://www.glideapps.com/">Glide</a>. If you're excited about making end-user software development a reality, go to <a href="https://www.glideapps.com/jobs">glideapps.com/jobs</a> and apply to join their team.
As ever, the transcript for this episode is sponsored by <a href="https://replit.com">Replit</a>.
The show notes and transcript are available right here: <a href="https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/050">https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/050</a>

Playful explorations of the rich past and exciting future that we're all building with our silly little computers. Hosted by Jimmy Miller and Ivan Reese.

Playful explorations of the rich past and exciting future that we're all building with our silly little computers. Hosted by Jimmy Miller and Ivan Reese.

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