I think software as a discipline (design, implementation, analysis) has a lot to learn from more traditional areas of UI research -- by which I mean design in t

I think software as a discipline (design, implementation, analysis) has a lot to learn from more traditional areas of UI research -- by which I mean design in the Donald Norman sense. Living off in the universe of Platonic forms of e.g. patterns for organizing patterns for organizing data is fascinating, but eventually we have to pause our theorizing and start inspecting the way humans come to grips with theory. There's a saying that one can write COBOL in any language, but nobody is born itching to POST INCREMENT C BY ONE. A given technology has a spirit; that spirit guides the usage of the technology; and people who use that technology, and share a sufficiency of that spirit, will find a welcoming home. That spirit is intrinsic to the technology; changing Java to not rely on Simula style classes for code namespacing would destroy Java -- it'd be something very different, and the usage of this new language would mean entirely new styles of conceptual organization. I'm not taking a stance in this post on the aesthetics of the various ways to organize programs; but I do think that the forensic exercise of determining the -- I dunno, zeitgeist? -- of a technology is an interesting, rich one.