On Programming with Agents

From the Zed Blog: Agents handle typing so we can focus on thinking.

Satisficing and the Use of Keyboard Shortcuts: Being Good Enough Is Enough?

Keyboard shortcuts are generally accepted as the most efficient method for issuing commands, but previous research has suggested that many people do not use them. In this study we investigate the use of keyboard shortcuts further and explore reasons why they are underutilized by users. In Experiment 1, we establish two baseline findings: (1) people infrequently use keyboard shortcuts and (2) lack of knowledge of keyboard shortcuts cannot fully account for the low frequency of use. In Experiments 2 and 3, we furthermore establish that (3) even when put under time pressure users often fail to select those methods they themselves believe to be fastest and (4) the frequency of use of keyboard shortcuts can be increased by a tool that assists users learning keyboard shortcuts. We discuss how the theoretical notion of ‘satisficing’, adopted from economic and cognitive theory, can explain our results.

Thinking with Type

The essential and bestselling guide to typography from beloved design educator Ellen Lupton—revised and expanded to include new and additional voices, examples, and principles, and a wider array of typefaces. "Thinking with Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time is to physics."—I Love TypographyThe bestselling Thinking with Type in a revised and expanded third edition: This is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Covering the essentials of typography, this book explores everything from typefaces and type families to kerning and tracking to grids and layout principles.Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words, and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered, and shaped. Historical and contemporary examples of graphic design show how to learn the rules and how to break them. Critical essays, eye-opening diagrams, helpful exercises, and dozens of examples and illustrations show readers how to be inventive within systems that inform and communicate.Featuring 32 pages of new content, the third edition is revised and refined from cover to cover: More fonts: old fonts, new fonts, weird fonts, libre fonts, Google fonts, Adobe fonts, fonts from independent foundries, and fonts and lettering by women and BIPOC designersIntroductions to diverse writing systems, contributed by expert typographers from around the worldDemonstrations of basic design principles, such as vi­sual balance, Gestalt grouping, and responsive layoutCurrent approaches to typeface design, including variable fonts and optical sizes; tips for readability, legibility, and accessibility; and stunning reproductions from the Letterform Archive Thinking with Type is the typography book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, anyone who works with words on page or screen, and enthusiasts of type and lettering. Readers will also love Ellen Lupton's book Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. She has written numerous books about graphic design, including Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she proudly serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision. Lupton loves reading, writing, teaching, and learning new things about design.

Dangerous Writing App

Dangerous Writing App. If you stop typing, all progress will be lost. Now with over 500+ writing prompts to choose from.

Prism: An Impure Functional Language With Typed Effects - Stephen Diehl

Personal blog of Stephen Diehl - Software engineer writing about technology, programming, and the future

Keyboard Shortcut Usage: The Roles of Social Factors and Computer Experience

Previous research (Lane, Napier, Peres, & Sándor, in press) has shown that despite the fact that it typically takes half as much time to issue a command to a computer application using that command's keyboard shortcut, most people issue a particular command by clicking an icon on a toolbar or by selecting the command from a pull-down menu. This study examined reasons why that might be the case with a web survey that focused on demographic characteristics of people who do and do not use keyboard shortcuts, as well as social factors of computer use that might influence use of keyboard shortcuts. Participants' shortcut usage was influenced by social factors, such as working in an environment with other shortcut users and experiential factors, primarily the hours spent using a computer per week.

The Geometry of Type

The Geometry of Type explores 100 traditional and modern typefaces in detail, with a full spread devoted to each entry. Characters from each typeface are enlarged and annotated to reveal key features, anatomical details, and the finer, often-overlooked elements of type design, which shows how these attributes affect mood and readability. Sidebar information lists the designer and foundry, the year of release and the different weights and styles available, while feature boxes explain the origins and best uses for each typeface, such as whether it is suitable for running text or as a display font for headlines. To help the reader spot each typeface in the wider world, the full character set is shown, and the best letters for identification are highlighted.

A quote from Andrew Quinn

One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the …

MD UI: a Typeface for Interfacing

I kill a lot of typefaces. It’s not that I don’t like them — quite the opposite. I think they deserve better. I love type too much to look at a half-baked idea and call it close enough, and yet sometimes a design’s full potential is simply out of reach. I resurrect typefaces, occasionally, when I find I’ve grown tall enough to try again.

The Accidental History of the @ Symbol

Once a rarely used key on the typewriter, the graceful character has become the very symbol of modern electronic communication

Its Time for a New Programming Language

Today, when compared to any other point in programming history, we find ourselves spoiled for choice when it comes to programming…

Twiddler 4 - By Tek Gear

A one-handed keyboard and mouse that lets you type faster wherever you go.

Formal methods and the future of programming

I’ve been telling people for the last 25 years that Jane Street as an organization was just not interested in formal methods.

Paul Chiusano: The future of software, the end of apps, and why UX designers should care about type theory

[   econ   fp   tech   unison   ux   ]            

Font recommendations | Butterick’s Practical Typography

Butterick’s Practical Typography

Cursor: AI coding agent

Built to make you extraordinarily productive, Cursor is the best AI coding agent.