Notices by chris martens (chrisamaphone@hci.social), page 2

a material does not prescribe a particular purpose. it has affordances that might be interestingly different from those of other materials, and suggest possible forms one could shape it to (using tools!) that wouldn't be possible with other materials. when you work with a new material you get new ideas!

a tool is something that helps you solve a problem without questioning if it's the right problem to solve. you have a task you want to do, maybe you already have a tool to do it, and another tool can be evaluated in terms of how it compares for accomplishing that task

programming language implementations aren't tools, they're materials. evaluating them like tools doesn't make any sense

trying to see if writing that as a toot will dissolve my urge to write an extended abstract about it

@julesh for the intuition part, it generally suffices to check the principal cut cases introduced by each new connective. if you’re doing something fishy with structural rules or adding new judgments then often the hard part is just *stating* what the cut principle should be

i don’t think it really makes sense for programming to be a direct manipulation activity, but i do think we can probably do better in terms of making visible/explicit the transformations on states implied by subcomputations

@jslr and if you take a care-centric approach to other professions that aren’t typically framed as care, including education and engineering, those things similarly don’t scale, which makes it tricky to justify to others even when you believe it’s right

values are
computations do
processes interact
sessions whisper
exceptions SCREAM

@julesh i need a thread or blogpost about this please

@julesh @zanzi if you scroll my TL to about 17 hours ago you will find various posts that start “as far as im concerned really theres only two types of software: …”

as far as im concerned really theres only two types of software: database, or compiler. your task is to work out which one of the two your idea fits into

@shriramk @stephstephking @inthehands I don’t know that that’s true. these conversations are really about money, right? admin can still be convinced to dissolve a department (and corresponding degree programs) if they believe its main purpose is to serve other units

@shriramk on the other hand, can anything a computer does really be considered an achievement?

all these software people obsessed with “shipping” and “deliverables” and “package managers” should consider the possibility that postal work might be their true calling

@anildash the links to the past posts 404 for me

@hannah true. This happened to me

@inthehands @Hope4All what an existentialist sentiment (laudatory)

@mcc yeah it’s even funnier on a train. like oh you want to go from your current location? well first uhhh get out of the train tunnel you nincompoop and walk to the station you just came from, where you will have missed the train you’re currently on

@grimalkina @inthehands some of us may never be all the way healed (in part because we had a lot of experiences similar to OP along the way). but i have so much frustration with my peers & elders who won’t even acknowledge that there’s a cycle to break

the labelmaker somehow elevates @simrob’s jokes that he leaves in notes for people to find around the house later