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It's nice and all, but this is a nightmare for accessibility. Not everyone can read paper or even move around. With this design, coding around those limitations

It's nice and all, but this is a nightmare for accessibility. Not everyone can read paper or even move around. With this design, coding around those limitations is not easy. In the current model, everything could be done 100% accessibly. Why it isn't is a completely different problem. When everything is inherently physical, though, accessibility is not just about the code, it involves much more parts, such as automated devices to move things around. Considering how expensive devices made for accessibility are (a braille display is usually well over $1000), that would be a huge setback. I think the beautiful thing about computers and technology is that you're not tied to any physical medium and that information can flow freely between devices that can represent it in different ways. Now, there can be ten programmers working on a codebase, where one person uses a normal Windows box with a lot of GUI editors, another one uses Linux in text mode with vim, a third one has a Mac Mini with a screen reader and no monitor attached (my also blind friend programs like that), and the fourth uses switches, eye movement sensors or voice-recognition technology because they're physically disabled (see https://youtu.be/YRyYIIFKsdU?t=501 https://youtu.be/YRyYIIFKsdU?t=501). In other words, when everything is purely digital, you can consume and manipulate information in any form you like and in any form the computer can work with. It can be on a smartphone screen and with your finger, on a TV with a remote, through a voice-controlled speaker or a laptop with a keyboard, the choice is yours. The information is purely digital and not tied to a particular medium. However, in Dynamicland, the information is mostly physical and it's the computer that needs to process it, not the other way around. That makes consuming the information through a different medium than it was originally presented with very difficult. It would be possible for a computer to describe a Dynamicland environment for the blind, but it wouldn't be easy for a blind person to write the code on Paper. In a normal computer environment, such a person can just use a different tool (AKA a screen reader instead of a display) and work on the level of their sighted peers. However, a dYnamicland environment makes such things impossible. I recognize the limited Value of Dynamicland as an exercise environment, maybe like Scratch. Even in that form, special considerations would need to be put so that disabled people have an alternative way of doing the same exercises. Dynamicland makes a lot of other things, not related to accessibility, harder too. For example, how do you deal with larger codebases or distributed teams? How do you quickly collaborate on one piece of paper while being in two different places? Very simple to do for a Google doc. Almost impossible to do here. The idea is kind of interesting but it would be only worth it in a pre-internet age. In 2018, people expect realtime collaboration with people in different parts of the world and with Dynamicland, that's not going to happen.

adamsea 8y ago
Similar accessibility problems already exist with the current interface of keyboard, mouse, and screen. If you have a physical disability making it impossible for you to type, use a mouse, or, are blind or colorblind, you require specialized software or hardware. There is no reason why Dynamiclands can't similarly have specialized hardware and software for people with various disabilities. Plus, a more natural/human interface might be more _accessible_.
- miki123211 8y ago
  No, not true. Now, information is kept in purely digital form, and the screen and keyboard are just ways to represent or manipulate it. The information is digital, so you can also represent and manipulate it using speech or switches. I'm writing this comment with a real keyboard, but my screen is completely dark. I use a screen reader that reads what's on the screen. That's only possible because your comment and the post itself is digital, stored as ones and zeros, and the screen reader can interpret it. In short, the digital text is the main representation of the post, while the letters on the screen or the synthesized speech are merely derivations. With Dynamicland, the information is represented on Paper and paper is the main medium of information. That means that if you want to write code, you can't write it using a keybord or speech or switches or eye-movement sensors or a terminal connected through a modem that dials up a computer somewhere, you need to be there, hold a pen and type it on the paper. Paper is the medium that really stores the information and it's not easy to quickly add code to paper. Of course, I could carry a portable printer that would accept a sheet of paper, let me make alterations using the familiar keyboard/screen reader interface and print them out, but then the collaborativeness becomes much harder. In other forms, paper should be a representation a user might choose, not the main form of storage and manipulation. Same for other physical media like the colored poker chips and pebbles mentioned in the original post.
  - skadamat 8y ago
    One of the goals of Dynamicland is to foster the creation of new representations that take advantage of + live across more sensory modalities. Bret calls them modes of representation, but there are similar phrases in learning & psychology literature. Most representations are haphazardly created (math notation, periodic table of elements, etc) by (often) singular experimentation. Representations are poorly researched and understood (there's no branch of science dedicated to them). If representations were studied more closely, we could get much better at deliberately creating representations that are more humane. When the scientific method is applied, we can then apply the engineering method to create new things from those principles. Bret's talk is a great, accessible overview of these ideas from his context (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg). To vastly oversimplify things, one way to improve accessibility is to parallelize representations that live in just 1 or 2 sensory modalities to all of our sensory modalities. This way, math notation could be made accessible to & equally powerful to the blind (as it is to those who can see). I empathize (a little, it would be naive for me to assume I can 100% empathize) with your reaction along the axis of accessibility. What Dynamicland looks like right now isn't what it's going to look like later. Right now, you may see Dynamicland as text boxes but now distributed in a room. In 50 or 100 years, there may be no text AT ALL and you can use the senses available to you to interact with information. To paint another perspective, I would argue that current computing environments are VERY in-accessible for many people. Laptops and desktops only tap into our visual and symbolic channels, with some tactile feedback (but quite minimal, we know where "X" is on the keyboard b/c of spatial reasoning not b/c the X key gives us specific/unique tactile feedback). Humans who thrive in spatial and kinesthetic channels are debilitated on a modern computer.

adamsea 8y ago

Similar accessibility problems already exist with the current interface of keyboard, mouse, and screen. If you have a physical disability making it impossible for you to type, use a mouse, or, are blind or colorblind, you require specialized software or hardware. There is no reason why Dynamiclands can't similarly have specialized hardware and software for people with various disabilities. Plus, a more natural/human interface might be more _accessible_.

miki123211 8y ago
No, not true. Now, information is kept in purely digital form, and the screen and keyboard are just ways to represent or manipulate it. The information is digital, so you can also represent and manipulate it using speech or switches. I'm writing this comment with a real keyboard, but my screen is completely dark. I use a screen reader that reads what's on the screen. That's only possible because your comment and the post itself is digital, stored as ones and zeros, and the screen reader can interpret it. In short, the digital text is the main representation of the post, while the letters on the screen or the synthesized speech are merely derivations. With Dynamicland, the information is represented on Paper and paper is the main medium of information. That means that if you want to write code, you can't write it using a keybord or speech or switches or eye-movement sensors or a terminal connected through a modem that dials up a computer somewhere, you need to be there, hold a pen and type it on the paper. Paper is the medium that really stores the information and it's not easy to quickly add code to paper. Of course, I could carry a portable printer that would accept a sheet of paper, let me make alterations using the familiar keyboard/screen reader interface and print them out, but then the collaborativeness becomes much harder. In other forms, paper should be a representation a user might choose, not the main form of storage and manipulation. Same for other physical media like the colored poker chips and pebbles mentioned in the original post.
- skadamat 8y ago
  One of the goals of Dynamicland is to foster the creation of new representations that take advantage of + live across more sensory modalities. Bret calls them modes of representation, but there are similar phrases in learning & psychology literature. Most representations are haphazardly created (math notation, periodic table of elements, etc) by (often) singular experimentation. Representations are poorly researched and understood (there's no branch of science dedicated to them). If representations were studied more closely, we could get much better at deliberately creating representations that are more humane. When the scientific method is applied, we can then apply the engineering method to create new things from those principles. Bret's talk is a great, accessible overview of these ideas from his context (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg). To vastly oversimplify things, one way to improve accessibility is to parallelize representations that live in just 1 or 2 sensory modalities to all of our sensory modalities. This way, math notation could be made accessible to & equally powerful to the blind (as it is to those who can see). I empathize (a little, it would be naive for me to assume I can 100% empathize) with your reaction along the axis of accessibility. What Dynamicland looks like right now isn't what it's going to look like later. Right now, you may see Dynamicland as text boxes but now distributed in a room. In 50 or 100 years, there may be no text AT ALL and you can use the senses available to you to interact with information. To paint another perspective, I would argue that current computing environments are VERY in-accessible for many people. Laptops and desktops only tap into our visual and symbolic channels, with some tactile feedback (but quite minimal, we know where "X" is on the keyboard b/c of spatial reasoning not b/c the X key gives us specific/unique tactile feedback). Humans who thrive in spatial and kinesthetic channels are debilitated on a modern computer.