Operators, Not Users and Programmers

https://news.ycombinator.com/rss Hits: 6
Summary

the modern distinction between “programmers” and “users” is evil and destroys agency. consider how the spreadsheets grow🔗 spreadsheets are hugely successful. Felienne Hermans, who has spent her career studying spreadsheets, attributes this success to "their immediate feedback system and their continuous deployment model": the spreadsheet shows you its result as soon as you open it, and it requires no steps to run other than to install Excel and double-click the file. Rik calls Excel “malleable software” and the resulting programs “vine-like systems”: The dream of malleable software is that we can enlarge the space of possibilities, users can enjoy more freedom and get more out of their software, without having to rely on software developers to provide it for them. i would go one step further: the dream of malleable software is to unify users and programmers, such that there are just “operators” of a computer, and “writing a program” doesn’t sound any harder than “writing a resume”: the distinction between "user" and "programmer" is an artifact of our presently barely-programmable and barely-usable computing systems. I would like to use the neutral word "operator" instead. —Stanislav this is a relatively new distinction! if we look at the history of computing and of programming languages, we see very different patterns: In the 1960’s the supply of programmers was not very deep so IBM and other companies trying to gain a computer sale would often have to sell the business prospect on the idea of creating its own programmer(s). Sometimes it was the shipping clerk; sometimes it was the head order taker; sometimes it was a bookkeeper, and sometimes it was a woman or man packing items in the warehouse. —Brian M. Kelly, The AS/400 and IBM i RPG Programming Guide this is what i want: for programming to be easy and simple enough to pick up that people can do it without specialized training in the field, so that they can write situated software. the “user/programmer” distinct...

First seen: 2025-07-06 00:19

Last seen: 2025-07-06 05:21