Distrust Simplicity

This is why I am not on Facebook.

A perceptive take on a recent tech meme that “scripting is the new literacy”:

Came across another choice Kernighan quote today:

Fascinating analysis of the effects of software interfaces — command line vs GUI — on habits of thought, and the kinds of thinking that each promotes. The discussion is couched in terms of internalization vs externalization, which I think is a helpful framework.

I recently read Peter Siebel’s Coders at Work and thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the interesting themes from the interviews is a consistently negative opinion of C++. While I work with C++ on a daily basis, I find myself in agreement (despite impressive demonstrations of its expressive power). Ken Thompson’s criticisms strike to the heart of the matter:

Nicholas Carr in an aside commenting on Readability, Instapaper, etc.

A well-considered take on the proliferation of programming languages:

A brief, thoughtful (but by no means new) essay on the relationships of people with their tools.

I feel a certain twinge of irony by linking to this, but it’s well worth a read… even on a screen.

Motiviated by the ongoing media-ecological discussion of how hypertext affects our minds, my favorite bookmarklet can now convert hyperlinks to footnotes for less distracting online reading.