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Rachel Rawlings (linuxandyarn@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 13:14:46 JST Rachel Rawlings
in reply to
- Alistair Davidson
@moh_kohn Bonnie Nardi's book is genius, but it's been decades since I read it. I should go find another copy.

In conversation about 22 days ago from mastodon.social permalink
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  Alistair Davidson (moh_kohn@mastodon.scot)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 13:14:46 JST Alistair Davidson
  in reply to
  
  @LinuxAndYarn Only just heard of it! In a discussion on bsky about how programmers used to read and engage in philosophy
  
  In conversation about 22 days ago permalink
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  Alistair Davidson (moh_kohn@mastodon.scot)'s status on Thursday, 13-Nov-2025 13:14:47 JST Alistair Davidson
  
  I've been trying to express exactly this discomfort with modern interface design and especially LLM design and this lady nailed it back in *1993*
  ("A Small Matter of Programming", Bonnie A. Nardi)
  In conversation about 22 days ago permalink
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  1. What interests me about these scenarios is not that they make fantastic, unrealistic promises, or that the instructions given by the user are couched in simple English, or that they embody such a grand vision. Rather, it is interesting that it is the programmer who is to control all of the computational magic. As Tesler says, programmers will endow computer-agents with their basic capabilities, even meeting such exciting challenges as pro gramming the computer to know what users will think before they think it! By comparison, notice the relationship of the end user to the computer; the end user is engaged in the most humdrum activities: making queries regarding a phone conversation, asking the computer to set up an appointment, requesting articles from the library. Now contrast this vision of the computer-agent with what Alan Kay envisions for educational software: children writing simulations of complex natural phenomena such as bi ological and physical systems to better understand how they function. Kay's colleagues have created a simulation construction kit for children so that they can build their own simulations. The construction kit lets children write simple scripts that model animal behavior. Using the kit they can change parameters to see how changing conditions affect the animal. This use of computers is an instance of what Tesler called the "personal implement": the children are doing nothing more or less than programming.
    https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/115/540/277/514/715/628/original/d4ba53792057b6a5.png

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