Build Software Quickly

Omar has worked at Dynamicland and built experimental computing interfaces like Hijack Your Feed and TabFS.  We talked about: Communicating computing design principles through demos, rather than manifestos. Embodying computational objects as things the user already knows how to manipulate, like files, screenshots, or pieces of paper. What it takes to make a computing environment complete enough to live on. Molding a temporary user interface that fits the current task. Links: Oberon operating system Canon Cat computer Geoffrey Litt Acme text editor GoldenEye - a history Omar's website Omar's GitHub Sponsors page

David Cole designs the incredible game making app, Castle. Before that, he was VP of Design at Quora. We talked about: The design decisions that make it quick and accessible to build expressive games with Castle. How Castle eschews some goals (like teaching coding or enabling professional quality games) so it can nail its actual goals. The techniques Castle uses to let people use latent time on their phone to create, rather than consume. Why games are valuable as culture. And why it's worthwhile working on a tool to make games. How game design techniques like emergence can be applied to non-game software. Links: Castle This podcast is part of Mary Rose Cook's research to build software quickly.

Geoffrey is doing a PhD at MIT on Human Computer Interaction and end user programming. He also does research projects with the independent R&D lab, Ink & Switch. He is working on helping more non-programmers build their own software tools. We talked about: Potluck, Geoffrey’s latest experimental tool that lets a user start with a meaningful document (like a recipe) and progressively enhance it with computation (like automatically adjusting timings). Trade-offs between concrete use cases, building for others and giving research time to show results. Orienting thoughts around end user programming around the context the user is in, rather than who they are. The ways that different communities help foster research. Links: Formality considered harmful Geoffrey’s website Geoffrey on Twitter Christopher Alexander This podcast is part of Mary Rose Cook’s research to build software quickly.