Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
Here is a very interesting 'cartoon' of what, in general, motivates people - certainly applicable to what you are talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc David On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Casey Ransberger casey.obrie...@gmail.comwrote: I've been thinking a lot about why I like to code, and how that relates to the fact that I will program for money. The programming for money part isn't nearly as satisfying to me for some reason as some of the stuff I've been doing for free. I did the groundwork for a themes engine which went into Cuis 3.0. That was ultra-fulfilling, because I liked the feel of Cuis a lot better than that of mainline Squeak (the keyboard navigation is a lot better, there's a lot less stuff everywhere in the UI layer, etc) but I absolutely had to do *something* about the look, as it seemed trapped in the 80's everywhere except for the lovely antialiased fonts. So it was a bit like the nice feeling you get after redoing a deck and inviting some people to hang out on it. It got me thinking about an interview I saw on the tubes that Alan did on collective cognition, where he mentioned a list of human motivators that anthropologists had identified. Does anyone know where a list like that might be found? Maybe in a book or a research paper with a title like _? I decided it would be a fun experiment to ask the people on this list if they might share some of their own motives for making and studying software. What makes your inner programmer tick? ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
On 19/02/2011, at 10:30 AM, Casey Ransberger wrote: I've been thinking a lot about why I like to code, and how that relates to the fact that I will program for money. The programming for money part isn't nearly as satisfying to me for some reason as some of the stuff I've been doing for free. I did the groundwork for a themes engine which went into Cuis 3.0. That was ultra-fulfilling, because I liked the feel of Cuis a lot better than that of mainline Squeak (the keyboard navigation is a lot better, there's a lot less stuff everywhere in the UI layer, etc) but I absolutely had to do *something* about the look, as it seemed trapped in the 80's everywhere except for the lovely antialiased fonts. So it was a bit like the nice feeling you get after redoing a deck and inviting some people to hang out on it. It got me thinking about an interview I saw on the tubes that Alan did on collective cognition, where he mentioned a list of human motivators that anthropologists had identified. Does anyone know where a list like that might be found? Maybe in a book or a research paper with a title like _? I decided it would be a fun experiment to ask the people on this list if they might share some of their own motives for making and studying software. What makes your inner programmer tick? I'm fairly similar to you in that it buzzes me if something I create or am involved with creating gets used often and I improve it, and also the fact that I've essentially been a catalyst to changing people's experience moment by moment, which makes people happier: this then makes me happier, so that's an answer to why?. This would have to be one of the most basic reasons we'd all have, I'd wager. Sure, there's an aspect of the exclusive feeling one gets from feeling that one is somehow thinking and considering in ways that most people don't get to, aren't able to, or aren't even interested in... but mostly it's the happiness that is derived from doing some good work on something that changes an ongoing experience one or more people have in their lives. Also, I feel that the actual act of creating something with a beautiful form is in itself amazingly rewarding - regardless of its application. Julian ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
It is indeed a reference to human universals. These are traits and drives found in every culture, and originally were identified in the 3000 or so traditional cultures studied by Anthropologists. For example, every culture examined has a language, stories, kinship, status and power, a culture (a tradition for living and survival), religion, magic, revenge, fantasizing, games and sports, music and dance, etc., about 300 identified so far, many of the most important ones are genetic. In computer terms these can be thought of as spreadsheet cells actively looking to the environment for concrete things to fulfill the traits and drives. This gives rise to a fundamental idea in Anthropology: a child at birth can be taken anywhere in the world and they will grow up as a member of the receiving culture, not the one they were born into. These drives operate to some extent even after most of them have been filled. Live in another culture for more than a few weeks and quite a bit of deep normalization starts to happen. So these are deeper than motivations but form some of the context for them. One branch of the science of traits and drives is Neuroethology. And there are several others. Once this idea is taken up, it is interesting to make a list of non-universals -- for example: reading writing, empirical model based science, deductive abstract mathematics, equal rights, etc. And to realize that these were inventions -- and not easy to come by, and quite recent given that female mitochondrial DNA suggests that we've been on the planet for about 200,000 years. Then we can note that a lot of money can be made by making amplifiers and environments for the built-in traits, and we can also reflect that the reason these sell so well is that we are essentially automating the Pleistocene. It is a much harder sell to both the funders and the public to make amplifiers and enviornments that embody the non-universals, even though much of what we thing of as civilization comes from our inventions not our genes. Cheers, Alan From: Thiago Silva tsi...@sourcecraft.info To: Fundamentals of New Computing fonc@vpri.org Sent: Sat, February 19, 2011 8:36:40 AM Subject: Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation On Friday 18 February 2011 20:30:56 Casey Ransberger wrote: It got me thinking about an interview I saw on the tubes that Alan did on collective cognition, where he mentioned a list of human motivators that anthropologists had identified. Does anyone know where a list like that might be found? Maybe in a book or a research paper with a title like _? It seems a reference to human universals. There is a book with this title by anthropologist Donald Brown. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Fwd: Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
Original Message Subject:Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:01:22 -0700 From: BGB cr88...@gmail.com To: Fundamentals of New Computing fonc@vpri.org CC: David Harris dphar...@telus.net On 2/19/2011 1:06 AM, David Harris wrote: Here is a very interesting 'cartoon' of what, in general, motivates people - certainly applicable to what you are talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc David yep, interesting... I have before noted that, personally, it is difficult to really care that much about money... money is there, something for some people to idolize, and something for others to screw over each other to try to get more of, ... but, personally, my efforts were not motivated as much by this... after all, I work mostly with compiler, VM, and some language-design stuff, and it is unlikely there is a whole lot of money to be made here... and, yes, a lot of it is fairly dull and boring as well... although it may seem like it, my goal isn't really to spend away all my time implementing yet another generic language exactly like all those that came before. or even spend all my time implementing yet new bytecode interpreters and JITs and performance-tuning the things rather, it is more that, doing all of this allows one to try their hand at chipping away at long-standing problems, in ways that simply using a VM or bug-fixing/maintaining the thing would not (as then, one has to swallow the existing architecture full-force, and there is no real room for experimentation...). one knows the architecture, one knows all its merits and flaws, but at the same time something is missing... so, it may well be a more satisfying experience to try ones' hand at making things, even if very possibly in the end it may well all just amount to nothing. granted, I don't really buy as much into the cult of novelty or originality either, as the existing forms and traditions make a good starting point, and are, in many ways, powerful tools worth leveraging. often, what real merit is there in purity and paradigm? wouldn't it be better to just do something a little more familiar and friendly, even if in some cases it would seem to involve slavish adherence to technically pointless traditions and minutia?... this is really the cost one pays, but it is at the deeper levels where one is more free to try out some of the possibilities. but, at which point one is ruled by their tools, rather than the other way around, something has gone wrong. it is like the folly of traditional VM/Platform architecture: they don't so much aid the user to do new and interesting things, so much as they tend to enslave the developer into whatever set of tools and development mindsets and application domains as were deemed important to the original developers. one is far better IMO just writing apps in C, as even if they get some of the ire and disdain from the Java and C# people, one is far more free when writing in C. but, it doesn't need to be this way, as there are still some interesting things worth observing and learning from these architectures, and maybe one may even go as far as to try their hand at improving on them... so, yeah, I am implementing a new VM and language... yes, the language sort of resembles a mix of Java, AS3, C#, and a few others, but the design motivations and underlying architecture differ notably, and this may well effect things more notably than the syntax. so, the syntax is a starting point: it defines a sort of baseline for what the language is expected to be able to do; but, syntax alone is not a limit on what a language can do (a syntax can do far more than the set of functionality usually exported for a language, although sadly many have also fallen into a sort of cult of syntax sugar, where syntax sugar is far more prominent than actually addressing core deficiencies). in fact, a language with a novel syntax may well hide most of its deficiencies: there is less expectation for what things are possible (or should be), and so many piles of trivial limitations will pile up, and then the problems will be hidden under the carpet. but, with a more traditional syntax, many such issues are a little more obvious, as then people will note I can do task X in language Y, and missing a basic capability will often stand out somewhat notably. granted, one is more open to criticism this way, as then, to claim to be better than something, it will in-fact have to be better, and an unsubstantiated claim will tend to be more readily apparent. but, OTOH, is this really a bad thing?... it may well force the creation of a better product overall, and people don't necessarily lose out. a product with novelty and a lot of overt features may seem to be less deficient than something else, but even if one can hide these things from being seen, they will still be felt by those who use the system, as the matter of why is there no good way
Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
This video is fantastic! I'm going to take this with me to work:) On Feb 19, 2011, at 10:39 AM, BGB cr88...@gmail.com wrote: Original Message Subject: Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:01:22 -0700 From: BGB cr88...@gmail.com To: Fundamentals of New Computing fonc@vpri.org CC: David Harris dphar...@telus.net On 2/19/2011 1:06 AM, David Harris wrote: Here is a very interesting 'cartoon' of what, in general, motivates people - certainly applicable to what you are talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc David yep, interesting... I have before noted that, personally, it is difficult to really care that much about money... money is there, something for some people to idolize, and something for others to screw over each other to try to get more of, ... but, personally, my efforts were not motivated as much by this... after all, I work mostly with compiler, VM, and some language-design stuff, and it is unlikely there is a whole lot of money to be made here... and, yes, a lot of it is fairly dull and boring as well... although it may seem like it, my goal isn't really to spend away all my time implementing yet another generic language exactly like all those that came before. or even spend all my time implementing yet new bytecode interpreters and JITs and performance-tuning the things rather, it is more that, doing all of this allows one to try their hand at chipping away at long-standing problems, in ways that simply using a VM or bug-fixing/maintaining the thing would not (as then, one has to swallow the existing architecture full-force, and there is no real room for experimentation...). one knows the architecture, one knows all its merits and flaws, but at the same time something is missing... so, it may well be a more satisfying experience to try ones' hand at making things, even if very possibly in the end it may well all just amount to nothing. granted, I don't really buy as much into the cult of novelty or originality either, as the existing forms and traditions make a good starting point, and are, in many ways, powerful tools worth leveraging. often, what real merit is there in purity and paradigm? wouldn't it be better to just do something a little more familiar and friendly, even if in some cases it would seem to involve slavish adherence to technically pointless traditions and minutia?... this is really the cost one pays, but it is at the deeper levels where one is more free to try out some of the possibilities. but, at which point one is ruled by their tools, rather than the other way around, something has gone wrong. it is like the folly of traditional VM/Platform architecture: they don't so much aid the user to do new and interesting things, so much as they tend to enslave the developer into whatever set of tools and development mindsets and application domains as were deemed important to the original developers. one is far better IMO just writing apps in C, as even if they get some of the ire and disdain from the Java and C# people, one is far more free when writing in C. but, it doesn't need to be this way, as there are still some interesting things worth observing and learning from these architectures, and maybe one may even go as far as to try their hand at improving on them... so, yeah, I am implementing a new VM and language... yes, the language sort of resembles a mix of Java, AS3, C#, and a few others, but the design motivations and underlying architecture differ notably, and this may well effect things more notably than the syntax. so, the syntax is a starting point: it defines a sort of baseline for what the language is expected to be able to do; but, syntax alone is not a limit on what a language can do (a syntax can do far more than the set of functionality usually exported for a language, although sadly many have also fallen into a sort of cult of syntax sugar, where syntax sugar is far more prominent than actually addressing core deficiencies). in fact, a language with a novel syntax may well hide most of its deficiencies: there is less expectation for what things are possible (or should be), and so many piles of trivial limitations will pile up, and then the problems will be hidden under the carpet. but, with a more traditional syntax, many such issues are a little more obvious, as then people will note I can do task X in language Y, and missing a basic capability will often stand out somewhat notably. granted, one is more open to criticism this way, as then, to claim to be better than something, it will in-fact have to be better, and an unsubstantiated claim will tend to be more readily apparent. but, OTOH, is this really a bad thing?... it may well force the creation of a better product overall, and people don't necessarily
[fonc] Software and Motivation
I've been thinking a lot about why I like to code, and how that relates to the fact that I will program for money. The programming for money part isn't nearly as satisfying to me for some reason as some of the stuff I've been doing for free. I did the groundwork for a themes engine which went into Cuis 3.0. That was ultra-fulfilling, because I liked the feel of Cuis a lot better than that of mainline Squeak (the keyboard navigation is a lot better, there's a lot less stuff everywhere in the UI layer, etc) but I absolutely had to do *something* about the look, as it seemed trapped in the 80's everywhere except for the lovely antialiased fonts. So it was a bit like the nice feeling you get after redoing a deck and inviting some people to hang out on it. It got me thinking about an interview I saw on the tubes that Alan did on collective cognition, where he mentioned a list of human motivators that anthropologists had identified. Does anyone know where a list like that might be found? Maybe in a book or a research paper with a title like _? I decided it would be a fun experiment to ask the people on this list if they might share some of their own motives for making and studying software. What makes your inner programmer tick? ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: [fonc] Software and Motivation
Making a difference. Making a mark. Finding elegant, non obvious solutions to tricky problems. Instant gratification of seeing the results of my work. On 2/18/11, Casey Ransberger casey.obrie...@gmail.com wrote: I've been thinking a lot about why I like to code, and how that relates to the fact that I will program for money. The programming for money part isn't nearly as satisfying to me for some reason as some of the stuff I've been doing for free. I did the groundwork for a themes engine which went into Cuis 3.0. That was ultra-fulfilling, because I liked the feel of Cuis a lot better than that of mainline Squeak (the keyboard navigation is a lot better, there's a lot less stuff everywhere in the UI layer, etc) but I absolutely had to do *something* about the look, as it seemed trapped in the 80's everywhere except for the lovely antialiased fonts. So it was a bit like the nice feeling you get after redoing a deck and inviting some people to hang out on it. It got me thinking about an interview I saw on the tubes that Alan did on collective cognition, where he mentioned a list of human motivators that anthropologists had identified. Does anyone know where a list like that might be found? Maybe in a book or a research paper with a title like _? I decided it would be a fun experiment to ask the people on this list if they might share some of their own motives for making and studying software. What makes your inner programmer tick? ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc -- Sent from my mobile device ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
