Bret Victor

26 Jun 2022 10:51 - 27 Jun 2022 12:54
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    • Inventing on Principle by Bret Victor (2012 talk)
      • Principles to guide work
      • Creators need an immediate connection, they need to see the effect of changes
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      • Q: immediate feedback seems wonderful. Yet most human endeavors don't have it, how have we survived so long?
      • Punch cards, and the whole pre-intereactive era
      • The millions of pieces (ideas) locked in people's heads. They need an environment in which they can grow.
      • Motivation: not opportunity, a moral wrong that needs to be fixed.
      • Technologists can have an activist stance (lifestyle)
      • Your principle?
        • "the world will try to define you by a skill"
        • the path of the craftsman vs the path of the problem solver.
        • "keep it simple" is too simple to be a principle.
        • A principle has to guide action: you see something wrong and have to do something about that.
    • Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface (2006 paper)
      • Interactivity is bad? Seems on the surface to actively contradict Inventing on Principle!
      • the larger intent is to introduce a “unified theory” of information software design, and provide inspiration and direction for progressive designers who suspect that the world of software isn’t as flat as they’ve been told.
      • Unless it is enjoyable or educational in and of itself, interaction is an essentiallynegativeaspect of information software.
      • Much current software is interaction-heavy and information-weak.
        • This seems no longer true, even if it was true at the time
      • Two centuries ago, Playfair invented statistical graphics and changed the world. The time is ripe for another designer to invent the fundamental context-sensitive graphical forms, and change the world again.