Geoffrey Litt Profile picture
Aug 27, 2018 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1/ A few observations about the binary number toy I made at @Dynamicland1 yesterday: Image
2/ "UI" comes for free from physical world. Each bit looks to its left for another bit to combine with, so you can play and create new numbers just by rearranging the bits.
3/ Each bit contains behavior, not just data. The bit looks for bits to its left, figures out the combined bit string, computes the decimal value, and labels itself. Spatial search and illumination taken care of by Realtalk OS so all pretty easy Image
4/ @acwervo had made a rainbow visualizer powered by a rotating dial. In a couple minutes we were able to easily connect the binary number to the rainbows, just by making the binary thing claim it was a new type of "dial"
5/ The whole thing took very little time to make and was kind of a casual side project we were playing with as we had a conversation at the table. when's the last time you casually programmed while having a conversation?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Geoffrey Litt

Geoffrey Litt Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @geoffreylitt

Jan 30
Just gave a talk about Tiny Essay Editor, a collaborative markdown editor we're using at @inkandswitch based on Automerge! Quick summary:

We wanted a nice local-first editor for writing our research essays, so we built one...

1/ Image
Tiny Essay Editor (TEE) is a surprisingly simple codebase because it builds on OSS libraries that do the heavy lifting:

- automerge as core CRDT
- automerge-repo for networking/storage
- codemirror for markdown editing, automerge-codemirror for editor integration

2/ Image
Automerge's API is simple: you just edit JSON objects locally, it persists + syncs them.

For TEE we just store a string for the contents, plus some JSON data for comments.

And then use a simple React hook to use the JSON data in a component...

3/ Image
Read 9 tweets
May 4, 2023
I wanted to convert a JSON file of a chat transcript into nice markdown text for sharing w/ people...

so I had GPT generate an ephemeral React UI where I can drag in the JSON file and it outputs the markdown🤓

reflections on the process:
My first idea was to just have GPT do the conversion itself: paste the JSON in and tell it to output markdown.

Worked fine, but slow, might not work on long transcripts, and hard to know if it's 100% reliable. Image
Next idea: have GPT generate code to do the task!

Just told it to make a node.js script that outputs "a nice markdown file", didn't bother specifying formatting details

Worked fine on first try. but! annoying to invoke a script in terminal, futz w filenames, etc Image
Read 9 tweets
May 3, 2023
This video is a fun case study in chatbot i/o modalities.

It claims that ChatGPT-over-voice is better than Siri, but I actually prefer Siri for this example…
Siri: responds immediately with a written sentence that I can read in the blink of an eye. Efficient.

ChatGPT: takes a while, slowly speaks out loud the answer
Takeaway for me: if I’m engaged with the task and can look at a screen, voice input + visual output is a nice efficient combo. Voice input is faster than typing but don’t necessarily need voice *output*
Read 5 tweets
Mar 23, 2023
This demo — “trim a video directly in ChatGPT” — offers a perfect example to reflect on pros/cons/nuances of chatbot as user interface. A few thoughts: 1/
To start, chat is obviously a silly UI for this task. My iPhone can trim videos and I can interactively scrub to pick a good time interval. Fast, precise, direct manipulation tools are nice.

That being said, I am not a total chatbot hater!

2/
The point of chat is that it’s not limited to trimming, it can do any edit I want!

Earlier today (coincidentally) I used GPT-4 to write one-off Python for video processing.

Was really neat to just say “add this overlay, slow down by 8x” without needing to learn a GUI

3/
Read 8 tweets
Mar 19, 2023
What if -- despite all the hype -- we are in fact underestimating the effect LLMs will have on the nature of software distribution and end-user programming? some early, v tentative thoughts: 1/
it seems likely to me that all computer users will soon have ability to 1) develop small software tools from scratch, 2) describe *changes* they'd like made to existing software they're already using. what will this mean for software ecosystems?? 2/
you, skeptic: "nooo but the LLM-generated software will be lower-quality than handcoded software by pro teams: filled with bugs, uglier, bad... 😡 "

Yeah totally true... also all qualities which also apply to spreadsheets vs "real apps"! 3/

Read 22 tweets
Mar 17, 2023
If you want to think crisply about live programming interfaces, highly recommend this paper by @qualmist and @jeffrey_heer!
We already talk a lot about "liveness" (fast visible feedback) in programming, but this paper argues there's another quality we want: *domain-specific* UIs for editing programs.

They call this quality "richness". Image
I've already found this to be a useful lens to apply in my work. Often a programming system that "seems vaguely cool" is only live or only rich, and if you have the vocabulary, you can be more attuned to possibilities of going further along one axis...
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(