Iterative

I rewatched Bret Victor’s 2013 talk The Future of Programming (from 1973).

Victor frames the talk as a presentation in 1973 discussing all the different approaches to computing that were being explored at the time and the kinds of tools and languages that came out of them, almost all abandoned or left as curiosities: concepts like spatial representations, constraint-based systems, concurrent programming models, and direct manipulation and software like Smalltalk, Sketchpad and Planner.

It’s interesting to consider all the paths that computing didn’t go down - possibly for good reasons. But what did we lose along the path? What are we re-discovering now?

This retrospective on the making of the original Fallout is worth watching even just for the part about the hoop jumping required to get Windows 95 certification

The Seneca: First Edition mechanical keyboard by Norbauer & Co starts at USD$3,600 and there is a 6-9 month waitlist to get one. It’s the first midlife crisis purchase that I could seriously get behind.

The Seneca is the product of one industrial designer’s obsession to build the perfect keyboard. One that looks, sounds, and feels exactly how Ryan Norbauer wants a keyboard to be.

In this Friday Video Adam Savage visits Norbauer and they dive deep into space bar stabilisers. And by deep, I mean way further into the rabbit hole that you’d think possible. It’s a wonderful interview.

And I really want one of those keyboards.

Self-described loner, rebel, and music chronicler Trash Theory’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of deep dives into bands and genres from the 80s and 90s.

This week’s one is about Weezer’s Blue Album.

[On] the band’s first album [Rivers] Cuomo wove tales of unravelling mental health, absent fathers and romances never attempted, told through the lens of personal minutiae and pop cultural obsession.

Bonus link from the comments: a Spotify playlist of every song mentioned in the video.

Simon Willison’s blog continues to be a wealth of interesting posts. Recently:

• The Door Problem
• Links and materials for Living off Microsoft Copilot
• Matt Webb’s Braggoscope Prompts

If you’re remotely interested in how modern programming is developing, including serious consideration of the bad bits, then Simon is a must-read.