[fwd to fonc]
When I speak of merging programming and HCI, I refer more to the experience
than the communities. I'm fine with creating a new HCI experience - perhaps
one supporting ubiquitous computing, augmented reality.
I can't say my principles are right! Just that they are, and that I
believe they're useful.
If you don't like call/cc, I could offer similar stories about
futures/promises (popular in some systems), or adaptive pipelines that
adjust to downstream preferences (my original use case).
There are actually several ways to compose predictive/learning systems. The
simple compositions: they can be chained, hierarchical, or run in parallel
(combining independent estimates). More complicated composition: use
speculative evaluation to feed predicted behaviors and sensory inputs back
into the model. (Speculation is also useful in on-the-fly planning loops
and constraint models.)
I think plodding along in search of new knowledge is fine. But my
impression is that many PL projects are ignoring old research, plodding the
old ground, making old mistakes. We can't know everything before we begin,
but we don't need to. Just know what has succeeded or failed before, and
have a hypothesis for why.
On Aug 29, 2013 8:50 PM, Sean McDirmid smcd...@microsoft.com wrote:
My own ideas are quite mundane on this subject since I take design at
face value. It is not something that can be formally validated, and is more
of an experiential practice. I disagree that formally “right” answers are
even possible at this point, and would have a hard time arguing with
someone who did given that we would be talking past each other with two
very different world views!
** **
Also, this might be interesting: HCI started out as a way of figuring out
how humans programmed computers, since there was very little interacting
with computers otherwise. The visual programming field was then heavily
intertwined with HCI in the 90s, before HCI broke off into its current
CHI/UIST form today. But I have to wonder: is merging HCI and programming
worth it? I say this, because I don’t believe the HCI community is a very
good role model; their techniques can be incredibly dicey. They don’t have
a formal notion of right, of course, but even their informal methodologies
are often contrived and not very useful (CHI has lots of papers, there are
a few good ones that do well enough in their arguments).
** **
Composition is quite thorny outside of PL. There is no way to compose
neural networks, most machine learning techniques result in models that are
neither composable or decomposable! There is a fundamental limitation here
that we in math/PL haven’t had to deal with yet. But this limitation arises
in nature: we can often decompose systems logically in our head (e.g. the
various biological systems of an organism), but we can’t really compose
them…they just arise organically.
** **
I don’t think call/cc is a good example of flexibility vs. guarantees. Not
many programmers use it directly, and those that do are very disciplined
about it. I would love to see someone push linear types just to see how far
they can go, and if they promote rather than limit flexibility like you
claim. I’m suspecting not, but would be happy to be wrong.
** **
“worse is better” is very agile and prevents us from freezing up when our
principles, intuitions, and formal theories fail to provide us with
answers. Basically, we are arguing about how much we know and can know. My
opinion is that there are just so many things we don’t know very well, and
we’ll have to plod along in the pursuit of results as well as knowledge.
This contrasts with the waterfall method, which assumes we can know
everything before we begin. These different philosophies even surface in PL
designs (e.g. Python vs. Haskell).
** **
*From:* augmented-programm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
augmented-programm...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *David Barbour
*Sent:* Friday, August 30, 2013 11:20 AM
*To:* augmented-programm...@googlegroups.com
*Cc:* Fundamentals of New Computing
*Subject:* Re: Interaction Design for Languages
** **
Thanks for responding, Sean. But I hope you provide your own ideas and
concepts, also, rather than just reacting to mine. :)
** **
On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Sean McDirmid smcd...@microsoft.com
wrote:
My response:
1) Formal justification of human behavior is a lofty goal, especially with
today’s technology. We know how to empirically measure simple reflexes (say
Fitt’s or Hicks’ law), but anything complex gets pummeled by noise in the
form of bias and diversity. And how do those simple processes compose into
cognition. Focusing just on what can be will lead to very LCD (lowest
common denominator) designs. And when we do finally figure it out, I’m
afraid we’ll be at the point of singularity anyway when we’ve learned how
to design something better
