Intro

Part 1 Sponsor: Replit.com

Part 2 The Bear Who Got Lost

Sponsor: Theatre.js

Part 3 So Long

There once was a podcast episode. It was about a very special kind of book: the Dynabook. The podcast didn't know whether to be silly, or serious. Jimmy offered some thoughtful reflections, and Ivan stung him on the nose.

Sponsored by Replit.com, who want to give you some reasons not to join Replit, and Theatre.js, who want to make beautiful tools for animating the web with you.

futureofcoding.org/episodes/57

There once was a podcast episode. It was about a very special kind of book: the Dynabook. The podcast didn't know whether to be silly, or serious. Jimmy offered some thoughtful reflections, and Ivan stung him on the nose.
Sponsored by Replit.com, who want to give you <a href="https://blog.replit.com/reasons-not-to-join-replit">some reasons not to join Replit</a>, and Theatre.js, who want to make beautiful tools for animating the web <a href="https://join.theatrejs.com">with you</a>.
<a href="https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/57">futureofcoding.org/episodes/57</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.

Future of Coding

Personal Dynamic Media by Alan Kay & Adele Goldberg

The subject of this episode's paper — Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler — is one of those grand ideas that makes you want to go stargazing. To stare out into space and just disassociate from your body and become one with the heavens. Everything — life, space, time, existence — all of it is a joke! A cosmic ribbing delivered by the laws of the universe or some higher power or, perhaps, higher order. Humanity waited two thousand years, from the time of the ancient Greeks through until the 1930s, for a means to answer questions of calculability, when three suddenly arrived all at once:
General recursive functions by Gödel in 1934, with functions of sets of natural numbers.
Lambda calculus by Alonzo Church in 1936, with anonymous single-variable functions.
Turing machines by Alan Turing in 1937, with a process for evaluating symbols on a tape.

Then it was discovered that these three models of computation were, in fact, perfectly equivalent. That any statement made in one could be made in the others. A striking coincidence, sure, but not without precedent. But then it was quietly determined (in 1934, again in 1969, and finally published in 1980) that computation itself is in a direct correspondence with logic. That every proposition in a given logic corresponds with a type in a given programming language, every proof corresponds with a program, and the simplification of the proof corresponds with the evaluation of the program.

The implications boggle the mind. How could this be so? Well, how could it be any other way? Why did it take so long to discover? What other discoveries like this are perched on the precipice of revelation?

Philip Wadler is here to walk us through this bit of history, suggest answers to some of these questions, and point us in a direction to search for more.

And we are here, dear listener, to level with you that a lot of this stuff is miserably hard to approach, presented with the symbols and language of formal logic that is so often inscrutable to outsiders. By walking you through Wadler's paper (and the much more approachable Strange Loop talk), and tying it in with the cultural context of modern functional programming, we hope you'll gain an appreciation for this remarkable, divine pun that sits beneath all of computation.

Links

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding — but only if you back the Visual Programming tier!! I'm warning you!
Wadler's Strange Loop talk Propositions as Types
Cocoon is good. It's not, like, Inside or Limbo good, but it's good. Actually, just play Inside. Do that ASAP.
Hollow Knight, also extremely good. Can't wait for Silksong. But seriously, if you're reading this and have haven't played Inside, just skip this episode of the podcast and go play Inside. It's like 3 hours long and it's, like, transformatively great.
Chris Martens has done some cool work (eg) bringing together linear logic and games.
Meh: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Yeh: Infinity and the Mind by Rudy Rucker
Heh: To Mock a MockingBird by Raymond Smullyan.
The hierarchy of automata
Games: Agency as Art
The Incredible Proof Machine is what some would call a "visual programming language" because proofs are programs. But it's actually really cool and fun to play with. Approach it like a puzzle game, and give it 10 minutes or so to get its hooks into you.
"Stop Doing Logic" is part of the Stop Doing Math meme. Unrelated: Ivan's song Don't Do Math.
Bidirectional Type Checking, a talk by David Christiansen
List Out of Lambda, a blog post by Steve Losh

Nobody noticed that these links were silly last time, so this time I'm drawing more attention to it:
Ivan: Mastodon • Email
Jimmy: Mastodon • Twitter

This link is legit:
DM us in the FoC Slack

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/068

The subject of this episode's paper — <a href="https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/propositions-as-types/propositions-as-types.pdf">Propositions as Types</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Wadler">Philip Wadler</a> — is one of those grand ideas that makes you want to go stargazing. To stare out into space and just disassociate from your body and become one with the heavens. Everything — life, space, time, existence — all of it is a joke! A cosmic ribbing delivered by the laws of the universe or some higher power or, perhaps, higher order. Humanity waited two thousand years, from the time of the ancient Greeks through until the 1930s, for a means to answer questions of calculability, when three suddenly arrived all at once:
<ul>
<li>General recursive functions by Gödel in 1934, with functions of sets of natural numbers.</li>
<li>Lambda calculus by Alonzo Church in 1936, with anonymous single-variable functions.</li>
<li>Turing machines by Alan Turing in 1937, with a process for evaluating symbols on a tape.</li>
</ul>
Then it was discovered that these three models of computation were, in fact, perfectly equivalent. That any statement made in one could be made in the others. A striking coincidence, sure, but not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery">without precedent</a>. But then it was quietly determined (in 1934, again in 1969, and finally published in 1980) that computation itself is in a direct correspondence with logic. That every proposition in a given logic corresponds with a type in a given programming language, every proof corresponds with a program, and the simplification of the proof corresponds with the evaluation of the program.
The implications boggle the mind. How could this be so? Well, how could it be any other way? Why did it take so long to discover? What other discoveries like this are perched on the precipice of revelation?
Philip Wadler is here to walk us through this bit of history, suggest answers to some of these questions, and point us in a direction to search for more.
And we are here, dear listener, to level with you that a lot of this stuff is miserably hard to approach, presented with the symbols and language of formal logic that is so often inscrutable to outsiders. By walking you through Wadler's paper (and the much more approachable <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU">Strange Loop talk</a>), and tying it in with the cultural context of modern functional programming, we hope you'll gain an appreciation for this remarkable, divine pun that sits beneath all of computation.
Links
=&gt; <a href="https://www.patreon.com/futureofcoding">patreon.com/futureofcoding</a> — but only if you back the Visual Programming tier!! I'm warning you!
<ul>
<li>Wadler's Strange Loop talk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU">Propositions as Types</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cocoongame.com/">Cocoon</a> is good. It's not, like, <a href="https://playdead.com/games/inside/">Inside</a> or <a href="https://playdead.com/games/limbo/">Limbo</a> good, but it's good. Actually, just play Inside. Do that ASAP.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.hollowknight.com/">Hollow Knight</a>, also extremely good. Can't wait for <a href="https://hollowknightsilksong.com/">Silksong</a>. But seriously, if you're reading this and have haven't played Inside, just skip this episode of the podcast and go play Inside. It's like 3 hours long and it's, like, transformatively great.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.convivial.tools/">Chris Martens</a> has done some cool work (eg) bringing together linear logic and games.</li>
<li>Meh: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach">Gödel, Escher, Bach</a> by Douglas Hofstadter</li>
<li>Yeh: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_and_the_Mind">Infinity and the Mind</a> by Rudy Rucker</li>
<li>Heh: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird">To Mock a MockingBird</a> by Raymond Smullyan.</li>
<li>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory">hierarchy of automata</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48765399-games">Games: Agency as Art</a></li>
<li><a href="http://incredible.pm/">The Incredible Proof Machine</a> is what some would call a "visual programming language" because proofs are programs. But it's actually really cool and fun to play with. Approach it like a puzzle game, and give it 10 minutes or so to get its hooks into you.</li>
<li>"Stop Doing Logic" is part of the <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stop-doing-math">Stop Doing Math</a> meme. Unrelated: Ivan's song <a href="https://ivanish.ca/dont-do-math/">Don't Do Math</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utyBNDj7s2w">Bidirectional Type Checking</a>, a talk by <a href="https://davidchristiansen.dk/">David Christiansen</a></li>
<li><a href="https://stevelosh.com/blog/2013/03/list-out-of-lambda/">List Out of Lambda</a>, a blog post by <a href="https://stevelosh.com/">Steve Losh</a></li>
</ul>
Nobody noticed that these links were silly last time, so this time I'm drawing more attention to it:
<ul>
<li>Ivan: <a href="https://mas.to/@todepond">Mastodon</a> • <a href="https://www.patreon.com/todepond">Email</a></li>
<li>Jimmy: <a href="https://mas.to/@todepond">Mastodon</a> • <a href="https://www.patreon.com/todepond">Twitter</a></li>
</ul>
This link is legit:
<ul>
<li>DM us in the <a href="https://futureofcoding.org/community">FoC Slack</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/068">https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/068</a>

Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler

Go To Statement Considered Harmful is a solid classic entry in the X Considered Harmful metafiction genre, authored by renowned computer scientist and idiosyncratic grump, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra. Surprisingly (given the impact it's had) this is a minuscule speck of a paper, lasting only 1-ish pages, and it even digresses several times from the main point. Fear not! Jimmy and I spend the entirety of these two podcast hours thoroughly analyzing the paper, wringing every last drop of insight from it, speaking directly to how programming ought to be reimagined from the molten venture capital core on up. Yes indeed, this is another episode in the fine tradition of Future of Coding where we stay faithfully close to the text, we leave the second-order implications alone, and there's nothing more than that. Nothing portended, nothing changed.

Links

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding
Hest, which Jimmy is convinced that I refuse to call by name, or even talk about. He's clearly mistaken — and yet, I feel his philosophical force on my hand even now. Conundrum considered harmful.
"All Cretans are liars" doesn't have quite the ring of "dipping their breasts into the ripper", and is considered harmful.
Dijkstra's The Humble Programmer considered harmful.
Hoare's The Emperor's Old Clothes considered harmful.
Letter O Considered Harmful considered harmful.
“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful considered harmful! Scolds!
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher considered considered considered considered considered considered considered considered harmful.
Proximity to Chomsky considered harmful.
Interlisp, an early lisp featuring the ] super paren, considered harmful.
The opening segment of the "I Want to Half-Believe" episode of Very Bad Wizards considered harmful.
The Witness considered harmful to our show notes.
Delimited Continuations considered harmful.
Notation as a Tool of Thought by "Kenneth E. Iverson considered harmful."
The Zen of Python considered a great honking idea.
Chunky Bacon considered harmful.
Copilot considered harmful.
Charles Babbage's Bridgewater Treatises considered harmful.
North & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica considered harmful.
The Sailor's Chorus from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman considered harmful.
PEP 8 considered harmful.
There are dozens of us considered harmful.
TC39 actually considered harmful.
Bifunctors considered harmful.
Chocolate
Radiolab considered one of the only good radio shows, because it's pushing hard against the norms of its medium.
UBI — consider it!
Forking The Queen considered harmful.
The Semantics of Graphical Languages, the paper about a visual formalism for visual programs, considered harmful.

Music featured in this episode:
Lemon
Wagner
Lu, Devine, William, Alex and Alex, Justin, Marcel, Peter, Matt, Blaine, Kevin, Nicki, Mae, Kate, Steve, Mitja, Philippa, Max, and everyone else who secretly said it like a swearword.

Get in touch, ask questions, don't ask questions:
Ivan: Mastodon • Email
Jimmy: Mastodon • Twitter
DM us in the FoC Slack
Support the show on Patreon

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/067

<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/362929.362947">Go To Statement Considered Harmful</a> is a solid classic entry in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful">X Considered Harmful</a> metafiction genre, authored by renowned computer scientist and idiosyncratic grump, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra">Edsger Wybe Dijkstra</a>. Surprisingly (given the impact it's had) this is a minuscule speck of a paper, lasting only 1-ish pages, and it even digresses several times from the main point. Fear not! Jimmy and I spend the entirety of these two podcast hours thoroughly analyzing the paper, wringing every last drop of insight from it, speaking directly to how programming ought to be reimagined from the molten venture capital core on up. Yes indeed, this is another episode in the fine tradition of Future of Coding where we stay faithfully close to the text, we leave the second-order implications alone, and there's nothing more than that. Nothing portended, nothing changed.
Links
=&gt; <a href="https://www.patreon.com/futureofcoding">patreon.com/futureofcoding</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://ivanish.ca/hest-time-travel/">Hest</a>, which Jimmy is convinced that I refuse to call by name, or even talk about. He's clearly mistaken — and yet, I feel his philosophical force on my hand even now. Conundrum considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox">"All Cretans are liars"</a> doesn't have quite the ring of "dipping their breasts into the ripper", and is considered harmful.</li>
<li>Dijkstra's <a href="https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html">The Humble Programmer</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li>Hoare's <a href="http://worrydream.com/refs/Hoare%20-%20The%20Emperors%20Old%20Clothes.pdf">The Emperor's Old Clothes</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Humor">Letter O Considered Harmful</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html">“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful</a> considered harmful! Scolds!</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher">James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher</a> considered considered considered considered considered considered considered considered harmful.</li>
<li>Proximity to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky">Chomsky</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlisp">Interlisp</a>, an early lisp featuring the ] super paren, considered harmful.</li>
<li>The opening segment of the <a href="https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-266-i-want-to-half-believe">"I Want to Half-Believe" episode of Very Bad Wizards</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/">The Witness</a> considered harmful to our show notes.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delimited_continuation">Delimited Continuations</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~jzhu/csc326/readings/iverson.pdf">Notation as a Tool of Thought</a> by "Kenneth E. Iverson considered harmful."</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_of_Python">The Zen of Python</a> considered a great honking idea.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why%27s_(poignant)_Guide_to_Ruby">Chunky Bacon</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/features/copilot">Copilot</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage">Charles Babbage</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises">Bridgewater Treatises</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li>North &amp; Whitehead's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica">Principia Mathematica</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1NyYT31Tw">The Sailor's Chorus</a> from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://pep8.org/">PEP 8</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKie-vgUGdI">There are dozens of us considered harmful.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://tc39.es/">TC39</a> actually considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia#Bifunctor">Bifunctors</a> considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.chocolate.wiki/">Chocolate</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.radiolab.org/">Radiolab</a> considered one of the only good radio shows, because it's pushing hard against the norms of its medium.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income">UBI</a> — consider it!</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(chess)">Forking</a> The Queen considered harmful.</li>
<li><a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?doi=ca25ecf69726cde7e4e735fbc9a6805daa4ca9df">The Semantics of Graphical Languages</a>, the paper about a visual formalism for visual programs, considered harmful.</li>
</ul>
Music featured in this episode:
<ul>
<li>Lemon</li>
<li>Wagner</li>
<li>Lu, Devine, William, Alex and Alex, Justin, Marcel, Peter, Matt, Blaine, Kevin, Nicki, Mae, Kate, Steve, Mitja, Philippa, Max, and everyone else who secretly said it like a swearword.</li>
</ul>
Get in touch, ask questions, don't ask questions:
<ul>
<li>Ivan: <a href="https://mas.to/@todepond">Mastodon</a> • <a href="https://www.patreon.com/todepond">Email</a></li>
<li>Jimmy: <a href="https://mas.to/@todepond">Mastodon</a> • <a href="https://www.patreon.com/todepond">Twitter</a></li>
<li>DM us in the <a href="https://futureofcoding.org/community">FoC Slack</a></li>
<li>Support the show on <a href="http://patreon.com/futureofcoding">Patreon</a></li>
</ul>
<a href="https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/067">https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/067</a>

Considered Harmful

This community is a big tent. We welcome folks from all backgrounds, and all levels of experience with computers. Heck, on our last episode, we celebrated an article written by someone who is, rounding down, a lawyer! A constant question I ponder is: what's the best way to introduce someone to the world of FoC? If someone is a workaday programmer, or a non-programmer, what can we share with them to help them understand our area of interest?

A personal favourite is the New Media Reader, but it's long and dense. An obvious crowd-pleaser is Inventing on Principle.

Bonnie Nardi's A Small Matter of Programming deserves a place on the list, especially if the reader is already an avid programmer who doesn't yet understand the point of end-user programming. They might ask, "Why should typical computer users bother learning to program?" Well, that's the wrong question! Instead, we should start broader. Why do we use computers? What do we use them to do? What happens when they don't do what we want? Who controls what they do? Will this ever change? What change do we want? Nardi challenges us to explore these questions, and gives the reader a gentle but definitive push in a positive direction.

Next time, we're… considered harmful?

#### $

We have launched a Patreon!

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding

If, with the warmth in your heart and the wind in your wallet, you so choose to support this show then please know that we are tremendously grateful.

Producing this show takes a minor mountain of effort, and while the countless throngs of adoring fair-weather fans will surely arrive eventually, the small kilo-cadre of diehard listeners we've accrued so far makes each new episode a true joy to share. Through thick and thin (mostly thin since the sponsorship landscape turned barren) we're going to keep doing our darnedest to make something thought-provoking with an independent spirit. If that tickles you pink, throw some wood in our fireplace! (Yes, Ivan is writing this, how can you tell?)

Also, it doesn't hurt that the 2nd bonus episode — "Inherently Spatial" — is one of the best episodes of the show yet. It defrags so hard; you'll love it.

#### Init
Bug report: Frog Fractions. Oh the indignity!
Hey, it's The Witness in our show notes again.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is the better game, even if it spawned Only Up and other copycats that miss the point. The Looker gets the point.
Getting Over It is a triumph that emerged from a genre of games that are hard to play: Octodad, QWOP, I Am Bread
Braid arguably spawned the genre of high-minded & heady puzzlers that all try to say something profound through their design.
Cookie Clicker and Universal Paperclips are good incremental games.
Jump King and Only Up are intentionally bad. Flappy Bird was accidentally good. Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator are purely for the laughs. Stanley Parable, like Getting Over It, brings in the voice of the creator to (say) invite rumination on the fourth wall, which is what make them transcendent.
Here's the trailer for Bennett Foddy's new game, Baby Steps.
So on the one hand we have all these "bad" and """bad""" and sometimes badgames, which actually end up doing quite well in advancing the culture. On the other hand we have The Witness, The Talos Principal, Swapper, Antichamber, QUBE, and all these high-minded puzzly games, which despite their best efforts to say something through their design… kinda don't.
When comparing the "interactivity" of these games, it's tempting to talk about the mechanics (or dynamics), but that formal definition feels a little too precise. We mean something looser — something closer to the colloquial meaning when "Gamers" talk about "game mechanics".
Silent Football might be an example of "sports as art". Mao is a card game where explaining the rules is forbidden.

#### Main
The Partially Examined Life is one of Jimmy's favourite philosophy podcasts.
Two essays from Scientific American's 1991 Special Issue Communications, Computers and Networks are referenced in the first chapter, one by Larry Tesler and one by Alan Kay. The other essays in this issue are also quite interesting to reflect on from our position 30 years hence.
Apple's Knowledge Navigator video, and HP's 1995 video, are speculative fiction marketing about conversational agents.
Rewind.ai is one of those "Computer, when did I last degauss the tachyon masticator?" tools. (Oh, Lifestreams…)
S-GPT is Federico Viticci's iOS/Mac Shortcut that strings together ChatGPT and various Shortcuts features, so that you can do some nifty automation stuff via a conversational interface. It feels like similar things could be built — heck, probably already have been built — with "If-Tuh-Tuh-Tuh" or Zapier.
When Ivan reaches for domain-specific terminology, LUT, Arri Alexa, and Redcome easily because, like, he wishes he had occasion to use them.
To hear the story about the Secret Service busting down young Jimmy's door, listen to his episode on the Code With Jason podcast.
C Is Not a Low-level Language — a fantastic article about the illusion that our source code closely matches what actually happens during execution.
What Follows from Empirical Software Research? Not much, according to Jimmy in this delightful article.
Jimmy likes to reference Minecraft's "redstone" which acts a bit like a programming system, so here, have a video about redstone.
Ivan saw this video via Mastodon, about someone making a "real" camera in Blender, and… just… 🤯 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw
Jimmy's orchestra struggled with an inappropriately formal approach to Coldplay's Viva La Vida.
Knuth's up-arrow notation

One meaning of "end-user programming" is about allowing people to build their own software. Another is about modifying existing software, and here are two interesting links related to this second meaning:


sprout.place is a lovely website where you decorate a little virtual space together with some remote friends. It's like a MySpace page mashed-up with a Zoom hang, but better.


Geoffrey Litt is a researcher who has tackled both meanings of EUP, but his work on the second meaning is especially interesting. For instance: he worked on Riffle, which explored the consequences of putting the full state of an app inside a reactive database, which is especially interesting if you consider what can be done if this database is available to, rather than hidden from, the end user.


To the best of our recollection, Jonathan Edwards has advocated for "end-programmer programming" as a helpful step toward end-user programming.

Get in touch, ask us questions, please no more mp3s ahh I can still hear the bones yuck:
Ivan: Mastodon • Email
Jimmy: Mastodon • Twitter
DM us in the FoC Slack
Support the show on Patreon
lol stands for "lots of love"

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/066

This community is a big tent. We welcome folks from all backgrounds, and all levels of experience with computers. Heck, on our last episode, we celebrated an article written by someone who is, rounding down, a lawyer! A constant question I ponder is: what's the best way to introduce someone to the world of FoC? If someone is a workaday programmer, or a non-programmer, what can we share with them to help them understand our area of interest?
A personal favourite is the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262232272/">New Media Reader</a>, but it's long and dense. An obvious crowd-pleaser is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII">Inventing on Principle</a>.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Nardi">Bonnie Nardi</a>'s <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262292368/a-small-matter-of-programming/">A Small Matter of Programming</a> deserves a place on the list, especially if the reader is already an avid programmer who doesn't yet understand the point of end-user programming. They might ask, "Why should typical computer users bother learning to program?" Well, that's the wrong question! Instead, we should start broader. Why do we use computers? What do we use them to do? What happens when they don't do what we want? Who controls what they do? Will this ever change? What change do we want? Nardi challenges us to explore these questions, and gives the reader a gentle but definitive push in a positive direction.
Next time, we're… considered harmful?
#### $
We have launched a Patreon!
=&gt; <a href="http://patreon.com/futureofcoding">patreon.com/futureofcoding</a>
If, with the warmth in your heart and the wind in your wallet, you so choose to support this show then please know that we are tremendously grateful.
Producing this show takes a minor mountain of effort, and while the countless throngs of adoring fair-weather fans will surely arrive eventually, the small kilo-cadre of diehard listeners we've accrued so far makes each new episode a true joy to share. Through thick and thin (mostly thin since the sponsorship landscape turned barren) we're going to keep doing our darnedest to make something thought-provoking with an independent spirit. If that tickles you pink, throw some wood in our fireplace! (Yes, Ivan is writing this, how can you tell?)
Also, it doesn't hurt that the 2nd bonus episode — "Inherently Spatial" — is one of the best episodes of the show yet. It defrags so hard; you'll love it.
#### Init
<ul>
<li>Bug report: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194840/Frog_Fractions_Game_of_the_Decade_Edition/">Frog Fractions</a>. Oh the indignity!</li>
<li>Hey, it's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AtV8FIzFI">The Witness</a> in our show notes again.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Over_It_with_Bennett_Foddy">Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy</a> is the better game, even if it spawned <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVHF-vSK3wY">Only Up</a> and other copycats that miss the point. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWHEmg7f8Lw">The Looker gets the point.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://youtu.be/DYjbCJXxWLg?t=473">Getting Over It is a triumph</a> that emerged from a genre of games that are hard to play: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbjqsMqJZ6M&amp;t=14s">Octodad</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmcMG4uxiHk">QWOP</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/RjJjUu0WjFg?t=77">I Am Bread</a></li>
<li><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/Braid/">Braid</a> arguably spawned the genre of high-minded &amp; heady puzzlers that all try to say something profound through their design.</li>
<li><a href="https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/">Cookie Clicker</a> and <a href="https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/">Universal Paperclips</a> are good <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game">incremental games</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_King">Jump King</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Up!">Only Up</a> are intentionally bad. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flappy_Bird">Flappy Bird</a> was accidentally good. <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/233720/Surgeon_Simulator/">Surgeon Simulator</a> and <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/265930/Goat_Simulator/">Goat Simulator</a> are purely for the laughs. <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1703340/The_Stanley_Parable_Ultra_Deluxe/">Stanley Parable</a>, like Getting Over It, brings in the voice of the creator to (say) invite rumination on the fourth wall, which is what make them transcendent.</li>
<li>Here's the trailer for Bennett Foddy's new game, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaOE-FpIBw">Baby Steps</a>.</li>
<li>So on the one hand we have all these "bad" and """bad""" and sometimes badgames, which actually end up doing quite well in advancing the culture. On the other hand we have The Witness, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/The_Talos_Principle/">The Talos Principal</a>, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/231160/The_Swapper/">Swapper</a>, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/219890/Antichamber/">Antichamber</a>, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1564220/QUBE_10th_Anniversary/">QUBE</a>, and all these high-minded puzzly games, which despite their best efforts to say something through their design… kinda don't.</li>
<li>When comparing the "interactivity" of these games, it's tempting to talk about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework">mechanics (or dynamics)</a>, but that formal definition feels a little too precise. We mean something looser — something closer to the colloquial meaning when "Gamers" talk about "game mechanics".</li>
<li><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/silentfootball/comments/rro8r2/the_rules_of_silent_football/">Silent Football</a> might be an example of "sports as art". <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)">Mao</a> is a card game where explaining the rules is forbidden.</li>
</ul>
#### Main
<ul>
<li>The <a href="https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/">Partially Examined Life</a> is one of Jimmy's favourite philosophy podcasts.</li>
<li>Two essays from Scientific American's 1991 Special Issue <a href="https://archive.org/details/communicationsco0000unse_p4x1/page/n3/mode/2up">Communications, Computers and Networks</a> are referenced in the first chapter, one by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler">Larry Tesler</a> and one by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay">Alan Kay</a>. The other essays in this issue are also quite <a href="https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/C5U3SEW6A/p1688074700726099">interesting to reflect on</a> from our position 30 years hence.</li>
<li>Apple's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mLqJNDWx-8">Knowledge Navigator</a> video, and HP's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPKX5iuBvZg">1995</a> video, are <a href="http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/">speculative fiction marketing</a> about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_system">conversational agents</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.rewind.ai/">Rewind.ai</a> is one of those "Computer, when did I last degauss the tachyon masticator?" tools. (Oh, <a href="http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html">Lifestreams</a>…)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.macstories.net/ios/introducing-s-gpt-a-shortcut-to-connect-openais-chatgpt-with-native-features-of-apples-operating-systems/">S-GPT</a> is <a href="http://ticci.org/">Federico Viticci</a>'s iOS/Mac Shortcut that strings together <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT">ChatGPT</a> and various <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortcuts_(app)">Shortcuts</a> features, so that you can do some nifty automation stuff via a conversational interface. It feels like similar things could be built — heck, probably already have been built — with <a href="https://ifttt.com/">"If-Tuh-Tuh-Tuh"</a> or <a href="https://zapier.com/">Zapier</a>.</li>
<li>When Ivan reaches for domain-specific terminology, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_lookup_table">LUT</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arri_Alexa">Arri Alexa</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema">Red</a>come easily because, like, he wishes he had occasion to use them.</li>
<li>To hear the story about the Secret Service busting down young Jimmy's door, listen to his episode on the <a href="https://www.codewithjason.com/podcast/13032809-186-jimmy-miller/">Code With Jason</a> podcast.</li>
<li><a href="https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479">C Is Not a Low-level Language</a> — a fantastic article about the illusion that our source code closely matches what actually happens during execution.</li>
<li><a href="https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/empirical">What Follows from Empirical Software Research?</a> Not much, according to Jimmy in this delightful article.</li>
<li>Jimmy likes to reference Minecraft's "redstone" which acts a bit like a programming system, so here, have a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooL9nVQA6qU">video about redstone</a>.</li>
<li>Ivan saw this video via Mastodon, about someone making a "real" camera in Blender, and… just… 🤯 — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9rEQAGpLw</a></li>
<li>Jimmy's orchestra struggled with an inappropriately formal approach to Coldplay's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE">Viva La Vida</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation">Knuth's up-arrow notation</a></li>
</ul>
One meaning of "end-user programming" is about allowing people to build their own software. Another is about modifying existing software, and here are two interesting links related to this second meaning:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://sprout.place/">sprout.place</a> is a lovely website where you decorate a little virtual space together with some remote friends. It's like a MySpace page mashed-up with a Zoom hang, but better.
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.geoffreylitt.com/">Geoffrey Litt</a> is a researcher who has tackled both meanings of EUP, but his work on the second meaning is especially interesting. For instance: he worked on <a href="https://riffle.systems/essays/prelude/">Riffle</a>, which explored the consequences of putting the full state of an app inside a reactive database, which is especially interesting if you consider what can be done if this database is available to, rather than hidden from, the end user.
</li>
<li>
To the best of our recollection, <a href="https://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm">Jonathan Edwards</a> has advocated for "end-programmer programming" as a helpful step toward end-user programming.
</li>
</ul>
Get in touch, ask us questions, please no more mp3s ahh I can still hear the bones yuck:
<ul>
<li>Ivan: <a href="https://mastodon.social/@spiralganglion">Mastodon</a> • <a href="mailto:admin@futureofcoding.org?subject=Question%20from%20an%20FoC%20Listener">Email</a></li>
<li>Jimmy: <a href="https://hachyderm.io/@jimmyhmiller">Mastodon</a> • <a href="https://twitter.com/jimmyhmiller">Twitter</a></li>
<li>DM us in the <a href="https://futureofcoding.org/community">FoC Slack</a></li>
<li>Support the show on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/futureofcoding">Patreon</a><a href="http://patreon.com/futureofcoding"></a></li>
<li>lol stands for "lots of love"</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/066">https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/066</a>

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