Google's Gregor Hohpe gives a Preview talk about how we model our software, and why the code itself can sometimes emerge as hairy. This was given on May 9 at the 2006 TheServerSide Java Symposium in Las Vegas. He makes a good point about usability testing for APIs (talk to the programmer who will be using the interface). He also talks about the problem of avoiding graffiti code, and hwo the solution is really to write something beautiful that inspires those that come later.
He makes some interesting points about this important topic, but I got to thinking about a) his presentation style (which is very similair to other technical presentation styles) and b) my relationship to the talk.
Gregor's style is chatty. He is very expressive with his hands. He tends to move a lot of information and anticipates a lot of questions about detail and addresses those systematically and with precise language. I say without criticism that he is very much "in his head". It is clear that he is a very abstract thinker. He appears to be quite comfortable speaking to a technical audience, and while his language is more precise than an average speaker, he uses traditional and well understood hacker vernacular. "Looking through the code, I found some funny things". "This is wrong, it should be that way." (in reference to source code) "There's a method that says 'get me that account'." (anthropormorphisation of code) It is an informal shorthand that presupposes a shared context, and it is quite extensive.
For a large part of the talk, he is speaking in front of a two tone background, neatly seperated at his neck. I am only half-seriously suggesting that this reenforces the seperation between mind and body.
Sitting here in front of my computer (a laptop, sitting on my desk), I am confronted with the "thinness" of the experience. The wiggling lights of the computer screen are so very small and insignificant. And yet as a programmer I have learned to attach significance to these wiggles, and know that each one can be meaningful. In this very narrow sense, television is an important precursor to the personal computer - it got people used to attaching significance to pixels. Even writing this blog entry, I am only causing very small wiggles on the screen.
The actual, visceral experience is very sugary. Empty calories. It is thin, weightless, disposable. The image is small, the sound tinny, and the vastness and reality of the "real world" and "real people" beckons.
In that case one can breath life into the abstract ideas which are being expressed, ignore the mechanics of how the information has been delivered, and start animating the mind in an almost visceral way.
In terms of energy, the computer is very low powered. It moves information, not physical objects (well, not exactly, but moving electrons or even hard-disk heads are pretty small). The action of the computer is fundamentally delicate. The computer is very much in its head, just like the people that work with them day-to-day.
Given that computers are becoming more important to so many people, does this mean that a) computers will not be adopted by those who are not abstract thinkers or b) will it turn the population into more abstract thinkers? Anecdotal evidence points to B.
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