Twitter Archive: 2016
Twitter dot com was a microblogging and social networking service, where users could share short posts (commonly known as “tweets”) with text, images, and video.
This is an archive of all my tweets from 2008–2025 (my username was @dubroy).
These days, you can find me on Bluesky or Mastodon.
By year
- 2025 33 posts
- 2024 203
- 2023 97
- 2022 91
- 2021 89
- 2020 26
- 2019 0
- 2018 6
- 2017 56
- 2016 108
- 2015 71
- 2014 197
- 2013 180
- 2012 160
- 2011 162
- 2010 171
- 2009 238
- 2008 101
…or see popular posts.
2016
New blog post: "What is State?" dubroy.com/blog/what-is-s…
I'm taking a break from Twitter for a while. I won't be reading @-replies or DMs—email me instead. See y'all on the flip side.✌️
Excited to present our new Ohm (ohmlang.github.io) paper @dynlangsym in a few weeks—"Modular Semantic Actions" ohmlang.github.io/pubs/dls2016/m…
I'll also be presenting an idea called "Situated Objects" at NOOL: 2016.splashcon.org/event/nool2016…. Maybe a blog post about it in the coming weeks…
Oh wow, @khanacademy has a "Long-Term Research" blog: klr.tumblr.com. Some great articles by @andy_matuschak, @mayli, and co.
"Tech is either brilliant or banal, heroic or heinous." Logic Magazine: logicmag.io
I'm no ML expert, but this seems big: deepmind.com/blog/different…
"Thinking the unthinkable" by @tomaspetricek: tomasp.net/blog/2016/thin…
More thought-provoking stuff from @edelwax: "declarative social" and "soft automation": alpha.trycarbide.com/@jxe/6d5e19369…
Been playing with Vue.js the past few days; a bit of a learning curve, but really digging it now. Computed properties seem like a big win.
More on #vuejs's computed properties: vuejs.org/guide/computed…. Basically dataflow variables with dynamic dependency tracking. So nice.
If you design digital products, you should really check out @subformapp. So much good stuff.
And consider backing their Kickstarter if that's your thing. kickstarter.com/projects/29822…
In what reality do these words make sense?
Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99) on the difference between critics and reviewers:
...from @smwat's wonderful "Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism": cjr.org/tow_center_rep…
An interesting experiment from Shopify and my alma mater 🇨🇦 twitter.com/tobi/status/78…
Hey, our research group has a web site now: harc.ycr.org
Xerox PARC org chart from May 1976: archive.org/stream/bitsave…. Didn't realize PARC was so big then!
"unexpectedly"
Just finished off a last-minute submission to NOOL: 2016.splashcon.org/track/nool2016. #normcore
See the "Making Music" section at the end. 😯 twitter.com/chrisnovello/s…
you forgot "humble"
See also: "The C Language is Purely Functional" conal.net/blog/posts/the… twitter.com/mfeathers/stat…
tfw you have a cool new idea but it turns out it was done at xerox parc 35 years ago 😣
Apropos, here's ThingLab, Alan Borning's graphical constraint solver, running on a Smalltalk-78 JavaScript VM: cdglabs.org/thinglab/
This is wonderful — How My Friends Described Some Colors To Me When I Couldn't See: li.st/ajesster/how-m…
Also, @joshmarinacci wrote a nice introduction to Ohm on the PubNub blog: pubnub.com/blog/2016-08-3…
Cool, looks like some people discovered our recent paper on the Ohm Editor: ohmlang.github.io/pubs/live2016/ 😊 twitter.com/avibryant/stat…
I wrote a little something about why I think React is interesting from an OOP perspective: dubroy.com/blog/the-inter…
Think Different businessinsider.com/how-apple-redu…
brb gotta go set up "Dubroy Operations International"
I've coveted this poster ever since I saw it in some dark corner of the Banff Centre almost 10 years ago.
The internet increasingly feels like a long, drawn-out performance of Lord of the Flies.
We expected William Gibson, but got William Golding.
Oh man, I've been prototyping in Keynote for close to a decade, and I *just* learned about Magic Move: macworld.co.uk/how-to/iosapps…
Why didn't anybody tell meeeeeeee 😭😭😭
Love what @sailorhg is doing with BubbleSort Zines: “It takes active effort to decolonize science education.” medium.com/@sailorhg/now-…
brb gonna go listen to the entire Fugazi catalogue: fugazi.bandcamp.com
The FP vs OO debate has truly lost all meaning when people bring up React as an example of a functional UI library.
I don't know why, but it really annoys me when people refer to Node.js as a language, e.g.: eng.uber.com/tech-stack-par….
"What are you favourite languages?"
"Oh, I used to prefer JVM, but these days I'm writing a lot of GHC."
"Oh, I used to prefer JVM, but these days I'm writing a lot of GHC."
It's gonna be a fun week…Sunday I'll be talking about the Ohm editor at LIVE 2016: ohmlang.github.io/pubs/live2016/, and Monday is @curry_on_conf!
Live programming circa 1988—Fabrik, a visual programming environment by @daningalls: sp.cmc.msu.ru/courses/smallt…
Ursula Le Guin: "Technology is the active human interface with the material world." ursulakleguin.com/Note-Technolog…
A Big Little Idea Called Legibility (ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-b…) via @jamiiecb
Shout out to the TensorFlow team for pointing out the elephant in the room.
research.googleblog.com/2016/06/wide-d…
research.googleblog.com/2016/06/wide-d…
What's an example of an application designed for experts, which has a really great UI?
I'm specifically thinking of GUIs here -- so not CLI apps, programming languages, etc.
Current status.
GitHub is web scale.
I have a hunch we'd learn more about intelligence from machines that can play soccer than machines that can play Go.
From Winograd & Flores "Understanding Computers and Cognition" (goodreads.com/book/show/5348…)
@edelwax - Have you read this? Reminded me a lot of our conversation (about conversations) in Berlin a few months ago.
"The key notion here is that 'time is a good idea'—we want it and want to deal with it in safe and reasonable ways." news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118085…
The 2nd half of this is a pretty good summary of what the big ideas in programming languages will be in ~10 years: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181263
@dubroy Whoops, that was supposed to be: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=118126….
I love when people use 2 data points to demonstrate exponential growth: "40 years ago a computer filled a room! Now it fits in your pocket."
TIL that "first-person shooter" in German is "Ego-shooter". This language is the best.
Sudden realization as I'm working on a conference paper: I could be doing this in a biergarten. #maß #baaaaaayern
Update: Fixed.
What's the over/under on the next AI winter starting before the end of 2016?
Happy to report that we'll be presenting the Ohm editor (cdglabs.org/ohm/visualizer/) at the LIVE workshop at ECOOP: 2016.ecoop.org/track/LIVE-2016
So sad to see your heroes fall so low.
New blog post—What I've been up to at CDG: dubroy.com/blog/what-ive-…
Dear friends, at long last I've redesigned my web site! Please take a look and let me know if you notice any bugs: dubroy.com
Just released v0.10.0 of Ohm: npmjs.com/package/ohm-js. Hard to believe this little project of ours is approaching 1k commits now...
"Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols…" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_n…
"Some people train kids…some, animals…I train objects." Teacher of Algorithms: vimeo.com/125768041
“The really big deal in the current chat bot craze is ambient, intelligent computation.” twitter.com/chadfowler/sta…
Investigating the potential for miscommunication using emoji: grouplens.org/blog/investiga… 😮😱
Career of the future: Pre-crime Engine Optimization (PEO).
"The assumption that an artist must be a technological incompetent is a very recent innovation." twitter.com/michael_nielse…
"I doomed mankind with a free text editor" by @mortenjust: medium.com/@mortenjust/i-…
From the be-careful-what-you-wish-for-department—my article for Code Words is on the HN front page: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=113881…
I wrote an article for @recursecenter's Code Words about programming with immutable data structures: codewords.recurse.com/issues/six/imm…
Does anyone know where I can find a good blog post expressing opinions on how I should write my code? Having trouble finding any.
"Conversational UI" is the new skeuomorphism.
Interface designers seem to have an uncanny ability to understand metaphor at the shallowest possible level.
A back and forth exchange of words is probably the least interesting thing about conversations—but that's all most "conversational UIs" are.
See Gordon Pask's conversation theory for a much more interesting way of thinking about conversational interfaces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversat….
Radical idea: stop participating in election-as-reality-TV, start talking about extrajudicial killings: theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nob…
"Most countries on the planet don’t routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in…countries where they’re not at war."
@edelwax @rmozone @jamiiecb Thanks for an inspiring conversation today. Looking forward to seeing the transcript :-)
Insightful words from @mrb_bk: "Making something physical & keeping it on your desk can teach you a hell of a lot" michaelrbernste.in/2016/01/29/the…
Spot-on definition from @chrisnovello: "Coding: a cruel method of programming" chrisnovello.com/teaching/risd/…
"Models are ideas about the world—how it might be organized and how it might work." dubberly.com/articles/model…
I like emoji, but please: 7 icons is not about "a universally understood vocab. w/ which anyone can better & more richly express themselves"
The headline "Consuming Reactions" (medium.com/facebook-desig…) is a pretty big tip off that they don't have your best interests at heart.
True.
A feel like lot of data-driven journalism is about truthiness more than anything. It's good old-fashioned misdirection—often unintentional.
"Pay no attention to the assumptions behind the data."
The Critical Engineering Manifesto: criticalengineering.org
Modern action verbs.
Inscrutable infoviz from @washingtonpost. (From washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…)
"Her story illustrates new ways of understanding who can engineer, what counts as engineering, & why this matters." engineeringathome.org
"Let the tools you make ask questions, not just solve problems." All Techology is Assistive: backchannel.com/all-technology… by @ablerism
"If GOOG makes a mistake, ppl. see an ad for car they don't want. If the govt makes a mistake, they kill innocents." arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/…
Chrome's omnibox is the most consistently frustrating interface I use regularly. About 50% of the searches I make are not what I intended.
When the search term changes just before I hit enter I'm like
Really looking forward to trying out @figmadesign—finally a vector drawing app for this century: medium.com/figma-design/i…
A different view of human-computer interaction: The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask—haque.co.uk/papers/archite…
@superSGP This seems like one for you.
Park's work dealt with "…the natural dynamic complexity that environments must have without becoming prescriptive, restrictive & autocratic"
Reminder (and shameless plug): if you are toying with a compile-to-JS language, you should really check out Ohm: github.com/cdglabs/ohm
"Hmmm, maybe I'll make a JavaScript syntax extension for this."
A few hours and 80 lines of code later: github.com/pdubroy/jsjoin…
A few hours and 80 lines of code later: github.com/pdubroy/jsjoin…
"If a proposition depends on everyone initially agreeing…then the likelihood of movement is vanishingly small."
@dubroy From "Notes on the Design of Participatory Systems": haque.co.uk/papers/noteson…
“the most important innovations [of] Silicon Valley did not emerge inside traditional private corps at all” howwegettonext.com/maximum-wage-3…
"The robot is a 20th-century, labor automation idea." spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-thin…
My Chrome extension replaces "artificial intelligence" w/ "natural stupidity": chrome.google.com/webstore/detai…. It's a hoot.
Many thanks to @stevenf for making the "cloud to butt" extension on which this is based.
The principle programming paradigms, in one handy chart.
Different perspectives: "Let’s not destroy history for future generations" vs. "once it's online you can never take it back".
Cool, someone wrote an Ohm syntax highlighter for vim: github.com/nfischer/vim-o…
From Klaus Krippendorf's "Designing in Ulm and Off Ulm": repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewconten… twitter.com/superSGP/statu…
"The visual representation is not merely an aid to human cognition…" tc.umn.edu/~giere//SCDC.p…
"The amateur…is at the forefront of experimentation, unencumbered by the need to be seen as infallible." stuckism.com/stuckistmanife…
Aaaaah I need to rant about this "the best UI is no UI" meme. It's such an impoverished view of the role of designed artifacts.
The best book is no book.
The best bicycle is no bicycle.
The best house is no house.
…don't these all sound ridiculous?
The best bicycle is no bicycle.
The best house is no house.
…don't these all sound ridiculous?
This seems related to the notion that "friction" between a need/desire and its fulfilment is somehow always bad. See Uber/Soylent/etc.
Experience, emotion, and *life* reside in these frictions. The best design opens up a new space for these things to thrive.
See "No to NoUI" by @timoarnall for a more articulate discussion of the issues: elasticspace.com/2013/03/no-to-…
related
twitter.com/xhfloz/status/…
twitter.com/xhfloz/status/…
"We propose that our digital domains become mysterious once again…" — A Design Manifesto in Favor of Play: janemcgonigal.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-cu…
"What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of $…[is now] a system completely controlled by a handful of people" medium.com/@octskyward/th…
Functional programming.
Lambda calculus is to the Beatles as the pi calculus is the Velvet Underground.
"One might suspect there is a bias against function calling because it is typically implemented as a complex, slow operation" —Sussman, 1976
That quote is from "Lambda, the Ultimate Declarative": repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-…. My how things have changed.
Funny to imagine what kinds of things we consider "too inefficient" today will be fundamental building blocks in 40 years.
You know, maybe we've got enough "tools for thought". How about "tools for feeling" and "tools for action"?
@jsconfbp Are you still looking for speakers? If so, I'd love to submit a proposal.
Disruption: the process of making all your shit as unreliable as your computer. twitter.com/nytimes/status…
"There is real fallout when people attempt to solve problems without acknowledging the underlying complexity." medium.com/the-developmen…
"I have a wonderful life. I do pretty much what I want, and the only real problem I ever have is wondering what that is." –Brian Eno
"Our labor is input to a system that’s extracting an enormous amount of capital that goes to a very few people" nerd.kelseyinnis.com/blog/2016/01/0…
It's kinda funny—almost all systems we write these days are distributed & concurrent. Why are we still so obsessed with the lambda calculus?
E.g., why aren't more people taught about process calculi like the π-calculus (pld.ttu.ee/~vadim/AIRT/12…)?
New blog post — Things I Read and Enjoyed in 2015: dubroy.com/blog/things-i-…
Another great piece of work from Nicky Case -- an introduction to thinking in systems. twitter.com/ncasenmare/sta…
One caveat I'd add to this: the map is not the territory. We can't forget this.