7 ms·

> Will end-user applications ever be truly programmable? Emacs, Smalltalk, Genera, and VBA embody a vision of malleable end-user computing: if the application d

by bpizzi 8y ago

> Will end-user applications ever be truly programmable? Emacs, Smalltalk, Genera, and VBA embody a vision of malleable end-user computing: if the application doesn't do what you want, it's easy to tweak or augment it to suit your purposes. Today, however, end-user software increasingly operates behind bulletproof glass. This is especially true in the growth areas: mobile and web apps. I'll pick this one: end users back then (emacs/vba/smalltalk era) are the power users of today. Today's end users are a new kind of users.

MrQuincle 8y ago
This is an interesting one to me. Will voice recognition at home coupled with AI allow people to start "programming". Currently home automation systems through something like Alexa are only listening to direct commands. Interesting follow-up functionality: * The capability for introspection. Alexa, who is home? Alexa, why are the lights on? Alexa, why are the lights not on? Especially the latter means advanced reasoning capabilities. * You preferably also want to adjust the behavior by voice. Alexa, when I enter the room I want the lights to go on. Alexa, the lights only need to turn on when it's dark outside. I had one student working on this problem: https://crownstone.rocks/attachments/thesis/nannewielinga.pdf https://crownstone.rocks/attachments/thesis/nannewielinga.pd... Recently I got a request from a person who works a lot with blind people. A system that allows them to query the state of the environment is very valuable to them as well. It's a different take on being "truly programmable", but I think the different modality makes it an interesting one.
- runevault 8y ago
  Huh this is an interesting thought. I've been reading On Lisp off and on lately and perhaps similar ideas of building both top down and bottom up apply to voice tools like Alexa where we create chainable series of commands to do a wider variety of tasks.
petra 8y ago
Yes. And today, many systems automatically personalize themselves for us, in very complex way. If the machine learning senses what i want to do(like in Google Search's personalization, which for most people it's probably better than advanced keywords), why do i need to bother with programming ?
icelancer 8y ago
Definitely. My company requires the use of standard Windows applications - no apps on mobile devices - that have fairly intuitive interfaces for me (a late 30's former software developer), and while they have quirks, I get around them decently enough. Many of my younger employees have never owned a computer. Literally. They use mobile for everything and only used the computer labs to do word processing and the like in college, or had work computers. And they are incredibly inefficient and basically useless when they encounter these applications for the first time; it is a huge training cost that I didn't expect going into it. But it makes sense, of course. My industry doesn't make applications for today's end users, it makes them for the people that suffered through the DOS/Windows 3.1/Novell Networking era, because most of their consumers are 30-50 years old in academia or large business. This split is happening in more than just my industry; it's happening in a lot of others due to the fast pace of mobile adoption and abandonment of the traditional PC. The real fear is that my employees are no better at using mobile devices than I am; in theory they should be, but in reality they're just technologically far worse than anyone else who had to grow up using complex systems. I have long-term fears about what this will do to the population; many people have long assumed that generations continue to get smarter and more tech-savvy, but I have found this to be very, very false in my limited experience.

by bpizzi 8y ago

MrQuincle 8y ago

This is an interesting one to me. Will voice recognition at home coupled with AI allow people to start "programming". Currently home automation systems through something like Alexa are only listening to direct commands. Interesting follow-up functionality: * The capability for introspection. Alexa, who is home? Alexa, why are the lights on? Alexa, why are the lights not on? Especially the latter means advanced reasoning capabilities. * You preferably also want to adjust the behavior by voice. Alexa, when I enter the room I want the lights to go on. Alexa, the lights only need to turn on when it's dark outside. I had one student working on this problem: https://crownstone.rocks/attachments/thesis/nannewielinga.pdf https://crownstone.rocks/attachments/thesis/nannewielinga.pd... Recently I got a request from a person who works a lot with blind people. A system that allows them to query the state of the environment is very valuable to them as well. It's a different take on being "truly programmable", but I think the different modality makes it an interesting one.

runevault 8y ago
Huh this is an interesting thought. I've been reading On Lisp off and on lately and perhaps similar ideas of building both top down and bottom up apply to voice tools like Alexa where we create chainable series of commands to do a wider variety of tasks.

petra 8y ago

Yes. And today, many systems automatically personalize themselves for us, in very complex way. If the machine learning senses what i want to do(like in Google Search's personalization, which for most people it's probably better than advanced keywords), why do i need to bother with programming ?

icelancer 8y ago

Definitely. My company requires the use of standard Windows applications - no apps on mobile devices - that have fairly intuitive interfaces for me (a late 30's former software developer), and while they have quirks, I get around them decently enough. Many of my younger employees have never owned a computer. Literally. They use mobile for everything and only used the computer labs to do word processing and the like in college, or had work computers. And they are incredibly inefficient and basically useless when they encounter these applications for the first time; it is a huge training cost that I didn't expect going into it. But it makes sense, of course. My industry doesn't make applications for today's end users, it makes them for the people that suffered through the DOS/Windows 3.1/Novell Networking era, because most of their consumers are 30-50 years old in academia or large business. This split is happening in more than just my industry; it's happening in a lot of others due to the fast pace of mobile adoption and abandonment of the traditional PC. The real fear is that my employees are no better at using mobile devices than I am; in theory they should be, but in reality they're just technologically far worse than anyone else who had to grow up using complex systems. I have long-term fears about what this will do to the population; many people have long assumed that generations continue to get smarter and more tech-savvy, but I have found this to be very, very false in my limited experience.