Stefano --

At 10:44 PM -0000 12/12/98, Stefano Franchi wrote:
>This is true only if we hold fast to the analogy programming/~/writing. In
>fact what society seems to have decided is that the analogy is false, that
>computers are just a very sophisticated tool substantially analogous to
>cars, whose design and production should be left to the specialists, and
>that programming is as genral purpose as mechanical drafting.

Nothing has "been decided yet" about computers. In the history of the
printing press (ca. 1450) the first 50 years would seem to show that
society had decided not to learn to read and write. The big changes took
much longer, but they were BIG, and society's real and eventual decision
was different than it appeared in 1500.
     Also, I believe that we don't yet have a programming medium worthy of
humanity (and especially of children). We have to create something much
better -- *above threshold* for "the new literacy" -- before we can start
complaining about society. I think this is possible in the next few years,
and I really want us to make it happen!

Cheers,

Alan

--------

At 10:44 PM -0000 12/12/98, Stefano Franchi wrote:
>>At 8:55 AM -0800 12/12/98, Jonathan A. Smith wrote:
>
>>One thing I think you and the Smalltalk group got right from the start was
>>the need for a system for everyday programming.  Smalltalk is designed so
>>that object-oriented programming becomes a natural and ordinary way of
>>interacting with software.  Users are not locked in to the controls and
>>ideas that some other engineer designed for them.  The environment opens the
>>software to examination and makes it relatively easy to adapt existing
>>components to the user's own purposes.  Programming can be done in small
>>increments rather than mounting massive code writing campaigns.
>>
>
>
>
>Excellent. I too  have enjoyed, as so many others, Alan Kay's contribution
>on the Dynabook and have always thought that the truly creative idea was to
>make programming part of the educate person's bag of skills. And yet, after
>20 years I wonder...how many people, even on this list, do write programs:
>
>a) not because someone else is paying them to solve problems they couldn't
>care less about?
>
>b) not because they enjoy  programming per se (and all its paraphernalia:
>programming environments, languages, etc)?
>
>Very few, I think.  If programming is a kind of literacy skill, perhaps a
>kind of writing, then all programmers are either scribes (a) or poets (b).
>
>You say:
>
>>As a society we have chosen to give programming tasks to a class of
>>specialists.  In the long term this makes as much sense as having a special
>>class of scribes who are trained in and have a monopoly on writing.  It
>>makes more sense to consider programming an everyday skill.  That is not to
>>say that there should not be professional writers (or master software
>>developers), but there are lots of non-programming specialists also have
>>lots of things they could program about.
>
>
>This is true only if we hold fast to the analogy programming/~/writing. In
>fact what society seems to have decided is that the analogy is false, that
>computers are just a very sophisticated tool substantially analogous to
>cars, whose design and production should be left to the specialists, and
>that programming is as genral purpose as mechanical drafting.
>
>How do I hope to be proved wrong!
>
>
>Stefano Franchi
>
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>| Stefano Franchi         Department of Philosophy          |
>|                         Stanford University               |
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>| Home: (650) 497-2812    USA                               |
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