In mainstream computing, ease of use is usually implemented as superficial simplicity or pseudosimplicity, as an additional layer of complexity that hides the underlying layers. Meanwhile, systems that are actually very simple and elegant are often presented in ways that make them look complex to laypeople.
aesthetics
Aesthetics is relevant to many aspects of computing. Here, we are mostly concerned of the superficial visual appearances and their technological bases.
Basic | The Personal Computing Platform
We build products, tools, and standards to make computers more personal.
Local-first software: pragmatism vs idealism
The peril of laziness lost | The Observation Deck
In his classic Programming Perl — affectionately known to a generation of technologists as "the Camel Book" — Larry Wall famously wrote of the three virtues of a programmer as laziness, impatience, and hubris: If we’re going to talk about good software design, we have to talk about Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris, the basis of good software design. We’ve all fallen into the trap of using cut-and-paste when we should have defined a higher-level abstraction, if only just a loop or subroutine. To be sure, some folks have gone to the opposite extreme of defining ever-growing mounds of higher level abstractions when they should have used cut-and-paste. Generally, though, most of us need to think about using more abstraction rather than less.
Why embracing complexity is the real challenge in software today
In the midst of industry discussions about productivity and automation, it’s all too easy to overlook the importance of properly reckoning with complexity.
P-code machine
In computer programming, a P-code machine (portable code machine[1]) is a virtual machine designed to execute P-code, the assembly language or machine code of a hypothetical central processing unit (CPU). The term P-code machine is applied generically to all such machines (such as the Java virtual machine (JVM) and MATLAB pre-compiled code), as well as specific implementations using those machines. One of the most notable uses of P-Code machines is the P-Machine of the Pascal-P system. The developers of the UCSD Pascal implementation within this system construed the P in P-code to mean pseudo more often than portable; they adopted a unique label for pseudo-code meaning instructions for a pseudo-machine.
unconventional computing
Unconventional computing, also known as alternative computing, refers to computing with unusual methods. An unusual method may be e.g. an unusual theoretical model or an unusual physical basis. The term "unconventional computing" was coined in 1998.
What I Found Interesting in Claude Code's Source
A breakdown of the most interesting engineering patterns in Claude Code's leaked source code: composable system prompts, runtime instruction injection, context compression, forking, prompt caching architecture, and more.
The Invisible OS
THE INVISIBLE OS – Every massive consumer technology business is selling the same thing: the removal of thought. In the end, convenience always wins. Dishwashers automated hours of domestic chores. GPS externalized our spatial memory. Calculators offloaded routine arithmetic. The pattern acceler...
The Invisible OS
THE INVISIBLE OS – Every massive consumer technology business is selling the same thing: the removal of thought. In the end, convenience always wins. Dishwashers automated hours of domestic chores. GPS externalized our spatial memory. Calculators offloaded routine arithmetic. The pattern acceler...
Convivial Computing Salon #6: Convivial design heuristics for software systems
Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend.
“Every line of code is written without reason, maintained out of weakness, and deleted by chance” Jean-Paul Sartre’s Programming in ANSI C.
Universal Virtual Computer
The specification of an hypothetical computer designed to decode and preserve some form of computation over time.
Intertwingler
The central premise of Intertwingler is that the computer is underutilized as an expressive medium. That may seem wild at first to say, but if you look around, you can find copious examples of the computer as a tool for preparing media, or as a vehicle for transporting or rendering media, but the actual content of the media in question would work just as well as if it had been made a hundred years ago:
The Interfaces With Which We Think
The concepts in modern operating systems — apps, windows, desktops, notifications, and so on — have so permeated our understanding of personal computing, it’s hard to imagine anything else, let alone believe there could be anything better.