16 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2024
    1. Programming models, user interfaces, and foundational hardware can, and must, be shallow and composable. We must, as a profession, give agency to the users of the tools we produce. Relying on towering, monolithic structures sprayed with endless coats of paint cannot last. We cannot move or reconfigure them without tearing them down.

      Counterpoint: the judicious use of abstraction is/can be, in some instances, the solution to giving users agency and reconfigurability.

      Software that has to be torn down is the result of software built upon bad abstractions. Abstractions are not ipso fact bad. They just need to be chosen on the criteria of whether or not they solve a problem.

    2. The software crisis doesn't just apply to the profession of building software, but to anybody that uses software. Users have little to no control, save for things afforded to them by the author.
  2. Mar 2024
  3. Oct 2023
  4. Jan 2023
    1. Software should be a malleable medium, where anyone can edit their tools to better fit their personal needs. The laws of physics aren’t relevant here; all we need is to find ways to architect systems in such a way that they can be tweaked at runtime, and give everyone the tools to do so.

      It's clear that gklitt is referring to the ability of extensions to augment the browser, but: * it's not clear that he has applied the same thought process to the extension itself (which is also software, after all) * the conception of in-browser content as software tooling is likely a large reason why the perspective he endorses here is not more widespread—that content is fundamentally a copy of a particular work, in the parlance of US copyright law (which isn't terribly domain-appropriate here so much as its terminology is useful)

  5. Aug 2022
    1. Editorial: The real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed: to democratize programming. It wouldn’t belong in any business plan, and I seldom mentioned to anyone, but the real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed was not about making money (although paying the mortgage was always important). The real reason was because of the feeling I had when I programmed a computer to perform work for me
    1. Roughly stated, my overarching career mission is to design, build, and deploy software platforms that put end users in control of their computing and data, in part by making it easy and natural for programmers to create software that honors user desire.
  6. Jul 2022
    1. Free as in ...? Points out that freedoms afforded by foss software to the average computer user are effectively the same as proprietary software, because it's too difficult to even find the source and build it, let alone make any changes. Advocates the foss developers should not think only about the things that users are not legally prevented from doing, but about what things they are realistically empowered and supported in doing.
  7. Jun 2022
    1. This is an excellent piece, even though the writing is (probably intentionally) in places too obscure.

  8. May 2022
    1. as if the only option we had to eat was factory-farmed fast food, and we didn’t have any way to make home-cooked meals

      See also An app can be a home-cooked meal along with this comment containing RMS's remarks with his code-as-recipe metaphor in the HN thread about Sloan's post:

      some of you may not ever write computer programs, but perhaps you cook. And if you cook, unless you're really great, you probably use recipes. And, if you use recipes, you've probably had the experience of getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who's sharing it. And you've probably also had the experience — unless you're a total neophyte — of changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don't have to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some mushrooms, 'cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your doctor said you should cut down on salt — whatever. You can even make bigger changes according to your skill. And if you've made changes in a recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your friends might say, “Hey, could I have the recipe?” And then, what do you do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with functionally useful recipes of any kind.

      Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program's a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it's just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it because the job it was written to do isn't exactly what you want. It did a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And after you've changed it, that's likely to be useful for other people. Maybe they have a job to do that's like the job you do. So they ask, “Hey, can I have a copy?” Of course, if you're a nice person, you're going to give a copy. That's the way to be a decent person.

  9. www.mindprod.com www.mindprod.com
    1. Show me a switch statement as if it had been handled with a set of subclasses. There is underlying deep structure here. I should be able to view the code as if it had been done with switch or as if it had been done with polymorphism. Sometimes you are interested in all the facts about Dalmatians. Sometimes you are interested in comparing all the different ways different breeds of dogs bury their bones. Why should you have to pre-decide on a representation that lets you see only one point of view?

      similar to my strawman for language skins

  10. www.dreamsongs.com www.dreamsongs.com
    1. the very existence of a master plan means, by definition, that the members of the community can have little impact on the future shape of their community,
  11. Apr 2022
    1. Why is Standard Ebooks sending content-security-policy: default-src 'self';? This is not an appropriate use. (And it keeps things like the Hypothesis sidebar from loading.)

    1. except its codebase is completely incomprehensible to anyone except the original maintainer. Or maybe no one can seem to get it to build, not for lack of trying but just due to sheer esotericism. It meets the definition of free software, but how useful is it to the user if it doesn't already do what they want it to, and they have no way to make it do so?

      Kartik made a similar remark in an older version of his mission page:

      Open source would more fully deliver on its promise; are the sources truly open if they take too long to grok, so nobody makes the effort?

      https://web.archive.org/web/20140903010656/http://akkartik.name/about

    1. work-around

      Bookmarklets and the JS console seem to be the workaround.

      For very large customizations, you may run into browser limits on the effective length of the bookmarklet URI. For a subset of well-formed programs, there is a way to store program parts in multiple bookmarklets, possibly loaded with the assistance of a separate bookmarklet "bootloader", although this would be tedious. The alternative is to use the JS console.

      In FIrefox, you can open a given script that you've stored on your computer by pressing Ctrl+O/Cmd+O, selecting the file as you would in any other program, and then pressing Enter. (Note that this means you might need to press Enter twice, since opening the file in question merely puts its contents into the console input and does not automatically execute it—sort of a hybrid clipboard thing.) I have not tested the limits of the console input for e.g. input size.

      As far as I know, you can also use the JS console to get around the design of the dubious WebExtensions APIs—by ignoring them completely and going back to the old days and using XPCOM/Gecko "private" APIs. The way you do is is to open about:addons by pressing Ctrl+Shift+A (or whatever), opening or pasting the code you want to run, and then pressing Enter. This should I think give you access to all the old familiar Mozilla internals. Note, though, that all bookmarklet functionality is disabled on about:addons (not just affecting bookmarklets that would otherwise violate CSP by loading e.g. an external script or dumping an inline one on the page`).

    2. CSP is taking away too much of the user's power and control over their browser use