From: Bryan Moss (bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Mon Dec 27 1999 - 14:04:17 MST
I offer my Three Laws of Computing for approval,
(1) Release source not standards.
(2) Emphasize hardware.
(3) Avoid human-computer interaction.
The first law is inspired by Squeak; standards can only ever
provide a *lack* of foresight. The second law is inspired
by Danny Hillis; future directions in computing are defined
by hardware, not software (massively parallel computing,
FPGAs, quantum computing, ubiquitous computing, etc). The
third law is inspired by David Tennenhouse, a Darpa computer
scientist; to quote Tennenhouse, "We need to declare victory
in the field of interactive computing and move on."
Consider programming. My interface to a program is through
a language such as C. I write a second interface for the
user through that interface, and then I write an interface
to the users interface (an options dialog, for example)
again through the original interface. That's three layers
of interface. Now consider a genetic algorithm that mutates
it's own machine code. Our current direction is to add
ever-increasing amounts of crud. The breaking point for me
was the introduction of Wizards; these provide an interface
to increasingly complex options dialogs. That's four layers
of interface. Humanity should be ashamed.
BM
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