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About my work.
The Original Goal: Universal democratization of understanding of digital technology, by analogy to earlier priest-controlled ubiquitous technologies: arithmetic, calendar, and writing, which ended up in primary school.
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The Original Goal: Universal democratization of understanding of digital technology, by analogy to earlier priest-controlled ubiquitous technologies: arithmetic, calendar, and writing, which ended up in primary school.
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The underlying social purpose has been to remove any priest class as a necessary intermediary between the people and their experience of mastery of digital technologies.
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Replacement Goal #1: Universal democratization of application building.
Everyone should be able to build applications.
Why not universal democratization of programming, as e.g.,
@ScratchEdTeam?
My approach is pragmatic, aimed at universal ability to build most useful apps:
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Everyone should be able to build applications.
Why not universal democratization of programming, as e.g.,
@ScratchEdTeam?
My approach is pragmatic, aimed at universal ability to build most useful apps:
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1. The social purpose will be served if anyone can build useful applications, in a technical framework that he/she has confidence in. This is analogous to the ability to do arithmetic without having to know what a theorem is.
2. I believe Replacement Goal #1 is feasible.
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2. I believe Replacement Goal #1 is feasible.
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Replacement Goal #1 is less ambitious than “everyone should be able to program”. Program what? There are many programs that are not applications, for example, operating systems, databases, and device drivers. Many of them are a lot harder to build than applications.
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By an “application” I mean a program with an intelligible interactive user interface that an ordinary person could use at a desktop computer or a mobile device to solve a (non-software-technology-related) information problem he or she has.
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The key finding: Replacement Goal #1 does not necessarily imply that everyone needs to be able to build ALL PARTS of his/her application. That suggests
Replacement Goal #2: Partition each application into two halves:
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Replacement Goal #2: Partition each application into two halves:
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1. A relatively simple half that anyone can build without being a programmer that looks like the whole application, except for some “missing parts” that can be filled in later.
2. A technical half that provides the missing parts in an experimental, accessible way.
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2. A technical half that provides the missing parts in an experimental, accessible way.
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Wireframes on steroids seamlessly morph into real applications without code.
I now have an approach to Replacement Goal #2:
melconway.com/talks/2019_con…
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I now have an approach to Replacement Goal #2:
melconway.com/talks/2019_con…
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