Geoffrey Litt

Welcome! I work on malleable software: computing environments where anyone can adapt their software to meet their needs with minimal friction. To see what that means to me, read this essay or listen to this interview.

Perfect Software - Software for an Audience of One

We have many names to describe personal tools. Malleable software speaks to how it behaves. Home-cooked software speaks to who makes it.

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps

The original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. In this essay, we envision malleable software: tools that users can reshape with minimal friction to suit their unique needs.

Malleable Systems Collective

The Malleable Systems Collective catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power in computing

malleable computing

By Devine Lu Linvega

Malleable software in the age of LLMs

All computer users may soon have the ability to author small bits of code. What structural changes does this imply for the production and distribution of software?

Malleable software in the age of LLMs

All computer users may soon have the ability to author small bits of code. What structural changes does this imply for the production and distribution of software?

Malleable software in the age of LLMs

All computer users may soon have the ability to author small bits of code. What structural changes does this imply for the production and distribution of software?

psf (@psf@oldbytes.space)

In their article ["Malleable Software"](https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software), Ink & Switch list various ways that modern software applications fail to serve the user: - Software is too rigid: users can’t tailor it to suit their workflow, except by entering the role of programmers. - Software applications are overspecialized "avocado slicers", not general tools like "knives", so their lack of tailorability is keenly felt. - Software doesn’t provide a reasonable learning curve from beginner to expert; in other words, time spent learning an application doesn’t unlock tailorability, instead the end user must learn an unrelated skill like a markup/scripting language or even the tool’s implementation language. - Software applications are increasingly siloed, so sharing data between apps, let alone orchestrating cross-app workflows, is overly difficult. These are real problems. From what I can tell, Ink & Switch are software researchers, and view the problems from a highly technical perspective, focusing on novel infrastructure that enables end-user programmability. They pose questions such as "how do we ease users into programming?" and "instead of shipping a dead, static binary, can we ship a living image containing programming tools allowing it to be modified in arbitrary ways while still running?" These ideas are technologically exquisite, but they fail to provide a gentle learning curve. (cont'd) 🧵

Apps and programming: two accidental tyrannies

On coding agents, malleable software, and the future of interface invention

Apps and programming: two accidental tyrannies

On coding agents, malleable software, and the future of interface invention

Patchwork

Studying version control in a malleable software context.