Just assembled a new bookshelf to hold some of my favorite books about computing ☺️
Two of these I see mentioned less often:

- A People's History of Computing in the US: great counterweight to hero narratives in computing history

- Changing Minds, by diSessa : incredibly deep insight into designing empowering computing environments for kids
Also, The New Media Reader is incredible. Felt like someone had perfectly curated a collection for my interests
Of course, I don't claim to have come close to understanding all the wisdom in these pages. Even SICP alone feels like a decade of study to grasp 😅
Perhaps another underrated book here is Weaving the Web, by TBL.

Why bother with secondhand explanations of the web when you can go right to the source

• • •

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

11 Nov
1/ Interesting discussion today around the idea of Apple adding realtime collaboration to AppKit...

But I wonder if a focus on realtime collab misses the more fundamental issue of the web vs native battle: zero-install apps.

stratechery.com/2020/apples-sh…
2/ As pointed out by @kevinakwok, Figma vs Sketch isn't just about designers collaborating in realtime.

It's about the CEO being able to give feedback with one click of a link! No fiddling with installation first.

kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why…
3/ Same point comes up in this great paper by @MidasNouwens and @cklokmose analyzing the "app" metaphor

They find that web vs native is more about the mental model shift from "files and apps" to "URLs", than the realtime collab per se

pure.au.dk/ws/files/12160…
Read 8 tweets
22 Oct
Engelbart, on the danger of building "natural" systems
He references this point in this 1986 talk looking back at The Demo and his work on NLS / augmentation. Strongly recommend

I think I would be very sad if I time traveled forward to 2070 and found their version of computing immediately familiar, "natural" and "easy to use"
Read 6 tweets
22 Oct
Hypothesis: the next big end user programming environment won’t be a “programming environment”.

It will be “just an app” where you put your data. But then sneakily becomes super powerful
I’d argue spreadsheets basically work like this.

This also isn’t a very hot take, I think Airtable, Notion and Coda all see this as their path to varying degrees
Read 4 tweets
22 Oct
Showing spreadsheet dependencies by subtle blending back and forth, rather than a separate "dependencies mode"

from 1998 work at PARC: www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/researc…
This feels loosely related to Observable’s dependency view... giving ambient glimpses of the dataflow structure underneath

I no longer agree with my prior take on this

It’s true the most naive approach doesn’t scale well, but the design space is vast

Read 4 tweets
20 Oct
I wrote a data vis article with @s3ththompson for the @ParametricPress!

It's about the role of fossil fuel companies in climate change, and how we can pressure them to be part of the solution.

Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom... 🤓

parametric.press/issue-02/corpo…
100% of the credit for this interactive 3D scene goes to @s3ththompson. It's amazing how adding 3D into the mix totally explodes the space of design possibilities...
Was fun learning this stack for the emissions visualization:

- @idyll_lang as base article framework, with scrollytelling module powered by the scrollama library
- react + react-spring for DOM rendering and animations
- d3 for math and data processing
Read 8 tweets
6 Oct
💫 Excited to share what I worked on this summer with @inkandswitch! We built Cambria, a tool that enables more flexible data compatibility in software.

Here's why I'm personally invested in this research... »
I believe deeply in being able to customize our software tools. But something has been bugging me: if we edit our tools, how does that square with collaboration?

Like, how far can I tweak my writing environment while keeping it working nicely with yours? »
The usual answer is: we all agree to use the same software, or the same file format. But this really limits how far we can tweak.

What if we could fudge around the edges more? Changing the data format while keeping things mostly working together... »
Read 5 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

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

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!